Immigration in American Society and Culture
History 510:533
Fall 2012
Tuesday, 5:30-8:10
Professor Kornel Chang
[email protected]
313 Conklin Hall
Office Hrs: Tues 12:30-2:30
This reading intensive course provides an overview of the major historiographical issues in U.S.
immigration history by integrating canonical and more recent scholarship in the field. We will
therefore cover the major debates/problems (e.g. assimilation, ethnicity, citizenship) that have
preoccupied practitioners in the field and see how recent trends in diasporic, transnational, and
global studies have transformed the study of immigration. The goal is to begin gaining mastery
over a body of literature that will give students a foundation from which to begin formulating
their own research questions and agendas.
Course Requirements
I. Participation and Discussion (20%)
Class meetings consist of discussions with students debating historical evidence, research
methods, and interpretations. Active participation and listening is expected for each session.
II. Critical Response Papers (40%)
Students will be required to write a 1-2 page response to the reading each week. The paper is due
via e-mail prior to class. Late papers will not be accepted.
III. Final Historiographical Essay (40%)
For the final essay, students will have the opportunity to explore one of the major
historiographical issues/questions raised in the class in depth, analyzing and synthesizing several
texts of your choosing. (15-20 pages).
REQUIRED TEXTS (Available for Purchase at Rutgers Bookstore and NJ Books)

John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925
(Rutgers, 2002)

Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America
(Oxford, 2001)

Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 18821943 (North Carolina, 2003)

Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Harvard, 2001)

Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the
Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton, 2011).

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
(Princeton, 2004)

Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in
Japanese America (Oxford, 2005)

Nayan Shah, Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the North
American West (California, 2011)

Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Duke, 1999)

Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North
American West, 1880-1930 (Cambridge, 2000)
COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS
Week 1
Sept 4
Course Overview
Week 2
Sept 11
Nativism and Ethnicity
John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (Rutgers,
2002).
Kathleen Neils Conzen et al., “The Invention of Ethnicity in the United States.”
Week 3
Sept 18
The Politics of Assimilation
David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
(New York, 1991), 95-132.
Russell A. Kazal, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in
American Ethnic History,” American Historical Review, 100(April 1995): 437-71.
George Sanchez, “Race, Nation, and Culture in Recent Immigration Studies,” Journal of
American Ethnic History 18:4 (Summer 1999): 66-84.
Kevin Kenny, “Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study,” Journal of
American History, 90 (June 2003): 134-62.
Week 4
Sept 25
Race and Migration
Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford,
2001).
Barbara Fields, “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America,” New Left Review
181 (May/June 1990): 95-118.
Week 5
Oct 2
Family and Gender
Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Harvard, 2001).
Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review
91:5 (Dec. 1986): 1053-1075.
Week 6
Oct 9
Unfree and Coerced Labor
Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North
American West, 1880-1930 (Cambridge, 2000)
Moon-Ho Jung, “Outlawing ‘Coolies’: Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of Emancipation,”
American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (September 2005): 677-701.
Week 7
Oct 16
NO CLASS MEETING
Week 8
Oct 23
Asian Exclusion
Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943
(North Carolina, 2003).
Kornel Chang, “Circulating Race and Empire: Transnational Labor Activism and the Politics of
Anti-Asian Agitation in the Anglophone Pacific World, 1880-1910,” Journal of American
History 96:3 (2009): 678-701.
Week 9
Oct 30
Empire
Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese
America (Oxford, 2005)
Kornel Chang, “Mobilizing Revolutionary Manhood: Race, Gender, and Resistance in the
Pacific Northwest Borderlands,” in Moon-Ho Jung ed., The Rising Tide of Color: Race,
Radicalism, and Repression on the West Coast and Beyond (Washington, 2013).
Week 10
Nov 6
Sexuality and Citizenship
Nayan Shah, Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the North American
West (California, 2011), 1-231.
Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
(Princeton, 2009), Chapters 1 & 6.
Week 11
Nov 13
The Illegal Alien
Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton,
2004).
Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton, 2003), 73-106.
Week 12
Nov 20
HOLIDAY BREAK
Week 13
Nov 27
Postwar Liberalism
Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global
History of Deportable Labor (Princeton, 2011).
Roger Rouse, “Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism,” Diaspora 1 (1991).
Week 14
Dec 4
Globalization
Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Duke, 1999)
Week 15
Dec 11
TBD