Covering Immigration

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course examines the journalistic record and political discourse around U.S. immigration policy, particularly from the post-9/11 Bush administrations to now. We’ll focus on contemporary government action, but will also place our current moment squarely in the larger context of the construct of an “American” identity from the 20th century to today. Drawing from the fields of political and social science, history, law, and journalism, the course will engage students in ethical and academic debate on the social, economic, and geopolitical factors that spur migration and the roles of governance, authority, democracy — including the press — in responding to it and shaping public opinion and policy around it. The course will require students to conduct research and reporting of their own with primary sources and the officials, writers and communities who have both shaped and also been shaped by the increasingly urgent debate over the “American Dream,” in the U.S. and around the world