Coming to America: U.S. Immigration History

4 Credits

This course addresses the historical roots of current-day debates in the United States over immigration, deportation, borders, refugee admissions, and the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the nation. It considers how immigration patterns and policies have reflected evolving ideas about race, gender, labor, sexuality, health, and political ideology. Using historical scholarship, government documents, film, and literature we will discuss citizenship, nativism, assimilation, the development of ethnic communities, and immigrant rights activism from the colonial period through the present. Attribute/Distribution: CC, HE, HU, W