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American Immigration (305-0-1)

Instructors

Shana B Bernstein
847/467-6850
620 Lincoln #205
Dr. Bernstein received her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University. Her research focuses on 20th century social reform, specifically civil rights and environmental justice. She teaches classes in Legal Studies, American Studies, and History on comparative race and ethnicity, immigration, and the history of health.

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 214: Mon, Wed 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Legal_St 305 "American Immigration", Also taught with HISTORY 305
Prof. Shana Bernstein, Winter 2024

This course introduces students to the social, political, legal, and cultural history of immigration in the United States. In addition to exploring the history of southern and eastern European immigrants, it uses a comparative framework to integrate Latin American and Asian migrants into our understanding of immigration since the late nineteenth century. The course is an exploration of major themes in immigration history rather than a comprehensive examination. Issues students will consider include immigration law, acculturation, community, racial formation, victimization vs. agency, religion, politics, gender, the transnational and international context of immigration, and competing notions of citizenship/nationality, among others.

Registration Requirements

Students must attend the first class to register

Learning Objectives

We have six primary objectives in this course: 1) To gain an analytic framework for understanding the processes by which immigrants have helped create and recreate their own and the United States' culture and society. 2) To understand the ways in which law has structured (and been structured by) the immigration experience, including to engage with scholarship describing the historical structures, processes, and practices that shape racism and anti-racism; power and resistance; justice and injustice; equality and inequality; and belonging and subjection. 3) To acquire knowledge of historical phenomena (U.S. legal, social, political, cultural, and social practices and their interdependent development over time in their local, regional, and global contexts) as examined through immigration and migration. 4) To develop skills of historical analysis, including the means to evaluate sources and become acquainted with scholarly historical debates and discussion. 5) To help students acquire historical perspective on the present, think and communicate critically about historical and contemporary society and politics, and appreciate the impact of historical developments in immigration history and in the historical study of immigration. 6) To foster analytical, reading, discussion and writing skills and learn to express the results of historical investigation effectively and persuasively in written, oral, and visual forms, and engage in debate with current and past interpreters of history.

Teaching Method

Discussion

Evaluation Method

3 Papers and Discussion

Class Materials (Required)

Natalia Molina, How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts, UC Press 2014 ISBN 978-0-520-28008-3

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Princeton
9780691160825

Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers, 3rd edition, Persea Books, 2003, ISBN 0892552905

Additional materials available via Canvas.

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity