HNRS-271 | American Migration & Identity

Full Title: American Migration & Identity

Topic Description:

How do we reconcile the truism that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants with the current American turmoil over immigration? What about past traumas over migrations into or within the country? This land mass has witnessed constant migration and assimilation of culturally disparate peoples for 500 years, and yet the settled populations always seem to forget their history in their anxieties concerning new arrivals. These anxieties manifest in widely varied ways, of course, and surely have varied roots as well. What can we glean from studying past patterns? How does race figure? What is different/comparable today? What aids assimilation? How does a foreigner become a neighbor? This course studies stories of U.S. migration, fiction and non-, at the individual level and group level, in order ask better questions of our present moment. Integral to the course is working, through a local agency, with individual new ESOL immigrants to Roanoke, to help them identify, tell, and write their personal stories.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: December 2016