History 800: US Immigration History
Fall, 2011
Weds, 7-9:40Dr. Rachel Buff
HLT 341Office: HLT 313
Office hours: W 5-7
& by appointment
Course Description: This course is designed to introduce you to some key themes and issues in the contemporary, shape-shifting field of im/migration studies. It offers nothing like full coverage of a topic! Instead, I have assembled a range of approaches to some of the central issues in/sites of historical studies of im/migration today. We will be reflecting throughout the course on questions of historiography and change.
Course Work:
- Papers.The course is organized into three units. Towards the end of each unit, students will write an 8-10 page paper synthesizing the different readings we have done, and making an argument about how the particular issues of each unit bear on the study of immigration history. I will post suggestions and questions for each paper a week before it is due. The papers should include reflection on the readings for each workshop.
- Thematic Workshops: There are three thematic workshops scheduled at the end of each unit. Students are expected to come in ready to discuss the key issues of the workshop, based on the readings assigned, and on their work on the unit paper due the preceding Monday.
- Class Presentations: Each student will sign up to lead a week’s discussion. The week you sign up for, you will come to class with a particularly informed understanding of all the week’s readings, with thoughtful questions for discussion, and connections to prior discussions and readings.
- Bibliographic Essay: Each student will develop a bibliographic essay (10-15 pages)on a topic of individual interest. You should try to link this assignment to your thesis or dissertation plans. This essay will outline the topic and discuss its treatment in the relevant and available literature, as well as the lacunae in this literature.
- Class Participation: This is graduate school. I assume everyone wants to be doing this. Attendance is requisite and expected except in cases of personal, political and/or national emergency. Participation is equally crucial: all students are expected to have read the assigned readings, engaged reflectively on them, and arrive in class with questions and comments to facilitate our collective engagement.
- Meeting with Instructor: Every student should meet with me, in office hours, at least once during the semester, to discuss the course & your particular interests.
Readings: All the course books- listed under “Schedule”- are available at People’s Bookstore on Locust Ave. However, you may want to purchase them used on-line. Citations for all articles are available through RefWorks; many of them are available full-text; the rest will be available through our D2L page.
Schedule
September 7Introduction
Historical Survey
September 14 Read: Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door
- Kitty Calavita, “Collisions at the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Laws”
- Mae Ngai, “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924”
September 21Read: Erika Lee, At America’s Gates
- Anna Pegler-Gordon, “Chinese Exclusion, Photography, and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy”
September 28NO CLASS: ROSH HASHONA
Work on short paper #1, due Monday, October 3
October 5Workshop #1: Nation and Transnation in Immigration Historiography
Read:
- Eiichiro Azuma, “The Politics of Transnational History Making: Japanese Immigrants on the Western "Frontier," 1927-1941
- Elliot Barkan, “[Immigration, Incorporation, Assimilation, and the Limits of Transnationalism]: Introduction”
- Matthew Frye Jacobson, “More "Trans-," Less "National"
- Donna Gabaccia, “Do We Still Need Immigration History?”
- Kevin Kenny, “Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study”
Gender, Sexuality & Migration
October 12Read: Margot Canaday, The Straight State
October 19Read: Jennifer Guglielmo, Living the Revolution
Short Paper #2 due Monday, October 14
October 26Workshop#2: Gender and Sexuality in
Immigration Historiography
Read:
- Donna Gabaccia & Vicki Ruiz, “Migrations and Destinations: Reflections on the Histories of U.S. Immigrant Women”
- George Anthony Pfeffer, “From under the Sojourner's Shadow: A Historiographical Study of Chinese Female Immigration to America, 1852-1882”
- Jeanne Petit, “Breeders, Workers, and Mothers: Gender and the Congressional Literacy Test Debate, 1896-1897”
- Siobhan Somerville, “Notes toward a Queer History of Naturalization”
- Marc Stein, “All the Immigrants Are Straight, All the Homosexuals Are Citizens, But Some of Us Are Queer Aliens: Genealogies of Legal Strategy in Boutilier v. INS”
- Cecilia Tsu, “Sex, Lies, and Agriculture: Reconstructing Japanese Immigrant Gender Relations in Rural California, 1900–1913”
November 2Critical Refuge Studies Conference November 3-4
Read:
- Long T. Bui, “Refugee Bodily Orbits”
- William A. Hunter, “Refugee Fox Settlements among the Senecas”
- Valur Ingimundarson,“Cold War Misperceptions: The Communist and Western Responses to the East German Refugee Crisis in 1953”
- Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, “Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920-1930”
Building Borders, Constructing Citizens
November 9Read: George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American
- Natalia Molina, “"In a Race All Their Own": The Quest to Make Mexicans Ineligible for U.S. Citizenship”
November 16Read: John McGreevy, Parish Boundaries
November 23THANKSGIVING
November 30Read: Franca Iacovetta, Gatekeepers
December 7Read: Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra!
- Rachel Ida Buff, “The Deportation Terror”
- Mae Ngai, “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the United States, 1921-1965”
Paper #3 due Monday, December 12
December 14Workshop #3: Ethnicity and Race in Immigration History
Read:
- Ronald Bayor, “Another Look at "Whiteness": The Persistence of Ethnicity in American Life”
- Barbara J. Fields, “Whiteness, Racism, and Identity”
- Victoria Hattam, “Whiteness: Theorizing Race, Eliding Ethnicity”
- Mary McCune, “Immigrants, Family, and "Ellis Island Whiteness"”
- Sarah Gualtieri, “Becoming "White": Race, Religion and the Foundations of Syrian/Lebanese Ethnicity in the United States”
- Monica Varsanyi, “Rescaling the ‘Alien’, Rescaling Personhood: Neoliberalism, Immigration, and the State
December 21Bibliographic Essays Due to D2L dropbox