The course will address the most relevant events and the main issues concerning immigration to the United States, nativism and their interpretation from the early Seventeenth Eighteenth century to the beginning of the Trump administration.
Francis G. Couvares et al. (a cura di), Interpretations of American History. Patterns and Perspectives, vol. II, Since Reconstruction, 8° edizione, Boston, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2009, cap. 5, Immigration: American Assimilation or Transnational Race-Making?, pp. 126-141, ISBN 978-0-312-48050-9.
Stefano Luconi e Matteo Pretelli, L’immigrazione negli Stati Uniti, Bologna, il Mulino, 2008, ISBN 978-88-15-12580-4.
Stefano Luconi, Sigillare la frontiera: immigrazione, sicurezza e integrazione, in Raffaella Baritono e Elisabetta Vezzosi (a cura di), Oltre il secolo americano? Gli Stati Uniti prima e dopo l’11 settembre, Roma: Carocci, 2011, pp. 251-65, ISBN 978-88-43-05998-0.
Stefano Luconi, “Todos americanos?” Incertezze e fallimenti sull’immigrazione, in Obama, un bilancio, in “il Mulino”, LXV, n. 5, settembre-ottobre 2016, pp. 780-87, DOI 10.1402/84352.
Mae M. Ngai, Immigration and Ethnic History, in Eric Foner e Lisa McGirr (a cura di), America History Now, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2011, pp. 358-75, ISBN 978-1-4399-0244-8 (e-book 978-1-4399-0245-5).
Matteo Pretelli, Dal Trattato di Guadalupe-Hidalgo al Secure Fence Act. Politiche statunitensi di controllo del confine fra Messico e Stati Uniti, in “Memoria e Ricerca”, n. 39, gennaio-aprile 2012, pp. 123-37, DOI 10.3280/MER2012-039008.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course the students will have the knowledge and analytical tools to critically master the most relevant events and the main issues concerning immigration to the United States, nativism, and their interpretations from the early Seventeenth century to the beginning of the Trump administration.
Prerequisites
None. A general knowledge of modern and contemporary history is advised but not compulsory.
Teaching Methods
Frontal teaching with group discussions during classes on readings that will be made available in advance on Moodle.
Further information
1) Further readings will be recommended during the course. They will be used for group discussions at classes and will become essential texts for the oral exam for the students attending classes.
2) The exam of “Storia degli Stati Uniti d’America” (6 CFU) borrows from module B of the exam of “Storia degli Stati Uniti nel mondo contemporaneo” (12 CFU). Module A of “Storia degli Stati Uniti nel mondo contemporaneo” borrows from the exam of “Storia della Russia” (6 CFU), whose instructor is Professor Andrea Borelli.
3) This program is valid for “studenti frequentanti” only. Attendance of classes is mandatory, except for students who formally enrolled as part-time students and for specific and duly motivated cases. These exceptions obviously do not apply to Erasmus students, for whom there are no waivers for class attendance. Attendance will be noted at the beginning of each class. Students attending at least twenty-four (24) hours of frontal-teaching classes will be regarded as “studenti frequentanti”. The students who are unable to attend the course are requested to contact the instructor by email in reasonable advance to agree upon an alternative program with additional readings supplementing the lack of attendance.
Type of Assessment
Oral exam (for students unable to attend classes and exchange students on the Erasmus program and the like, too) on the issues addressed during classes, including the contents of the readings uploaded to Moodle, and in the "textbooks" section of the syllabus. The main evaluation criteria will be the ability to discuss the issues addressed during classes, including the contents of the readings uploaded to Moodle, and in the volumes of the “testi di riferimento” section of the syllabus; clarity in expressing one’s ideas and arguments. Students are advised not to prepare the exam by learning names and dates by heart. Each oral exam will be rigorously individual and will last between twenty and forty minutes, involving three to five questions. Its length will be inversely proportional to the student’s knowledge. Questions will aim at assessing a) knowledge and understanding of the historical developments, b) knowledge and understanding of the most important phenomena and c) knowledge and understanding of the most relevant events. The final grade will result from the combination of the assessment of each of the three parts.
Course program
IMMIGRATION AND NATIVISM IN U.S. HISTORY. Donald Trump’s electoral promises – albeit unfulfilled – to build a wall along the border with Mexico and to have the latter pay for its cost, his controversial executive orders for the enforcement of a partial Muslim ban, and his stigmatization of Mexicans as drug dealers, rapists and likely lawbreakers have again brought the issues concerning immigration to the United States to the foreground of both Washington’s political agenda and the scholarly debate at home as well as abroad. The public use of history on the part of Trump’s critics and opponents has tended to overemphasize an allegedly long and solid tradition of U.S. largesse in welcoming immigrants and, conversely, to overlook a past characterized by cyclical outbursts of nativism and xenophobia, of which the current president’s vision of America as a white society of European ancestry is only the latest manifestation. Indeed, although the United States is really “a land of immigrants”, as John F. Kennedy was pleased to maintain, and American society is today multiethnic and multiracial, calls for the selection of the prospective newcomers began to surface almost at the same time of the birth of the country as a sovereign nation in the late Eighteenth century, when a white and Anglo-Saxon establishment from northern European background ruled. Furthermore, after almost a century shaped by an open door policy, Washington restricted Asian immigration in the 1880s, starting with the case of Chinese workers in 1882, and definitively closed the age of the mass inflow in the first half of the 1920s by enforcing a national-origins system that intentionally discriminated against persons from eastern and southern Europe. These latter provisions were repealed only as late as 1965 and the new rules paved the way for the transformation of the United States into a multiethnic and a multiracial society. But the size of immigration continued to be restricted. The course intends to outline the diverse eras in the history of immigration to the United States within the context of the pressures for the restriction of incoming fluxes so as to exclude people regarded as hardly assimilable, a political threat, and a menace for the economic welfare of American society or for the national security. Special attention will be paid to the criteria to acquire US citizenship and to the dynamics of the establishment of the jus soli as litmus tests to assess which ethno-racial groups the United States intended to welcome and which ones it wanted to ward off. The time frame examined will cover the period from the establishment of the European colonies in North America in the early Seventeenth century to the beginning of the Trump administration. Classes will also address the various interpretative paradigms that have been elaborated to account for the newcomers’ interaction with their adoptive society. They will deal with the diverse historiographical approaches to the study of immigration, too.