552.336 (19S) Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US

Sommersemester 2019

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First course session
06.03.2019 14:00 - 16:00 N.0.27 On Campus
... no further dates known

Overview

Lecturer
Course title german Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US
Type Seminar (continuous assessment course )
Hours per Week 2.0
ECTS credits 6.0
Registrations 16 (25 max.)
Organisational unit
Language of instruction English
Course begins on 06.03.2019
eLearning Go to Moodle course

Time and place

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Course Information

Intended learning outcomes

Students who complete this course will gain:

  • The ability to put debates about American immigration policies and laws into historic and comparative contexts, and to make sense of how the United States’ governance of immigration has both changed over time, and compares to the policies of other nations;
  • The ability to think critically about the evolution of and constitutional basis for immigration law and how it is shaped by dominant American cultural attitudes and ideologies;
  • The ability to think critically about how modern nation-states operate, and how borders, controls on human mobility, and citizenship define modern subjectivity;
  • The ability to compare how migration gets governed in relationship to controls (or their absence) on global trade and the circulation of ideas and culture;
  •  The ability to research and curate an exhibition on the history of migration

Course content

The idea that the United States is a “nation of immigrants” has been branded into the American public’s consciousness and cited as a source of American exceptionalism. If the United States is a “nation of immigrants,” however, it is also a nation built on the labor of enslaved, involuntary migrants. Since the late nineteenth century, the United States has initiated numerous laws restricting entry into the country for racial, economic, and social reasons. Today, nativist sentiment and anti-immigration laws under the Trump presidency show no signs of abating. This course aims to analyze migration through a critical framework that can inform dialogues and conversations about how to govern migration – whether in the United States, Austria, or globally – more humanely and justly.

Covering the colonial period to the present, we will examine the cultural, economic, and ideological factors behind the United States’ immigration policies during different eras. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to how immigration laws and their enforcement: reflect American attitudes; inform the United States’ relationships with other nations; and, create different legal statuses. As a class, we will look at how seemingly natural features of modern life, such as passports, national borders, and the notion of “legal” versus “illegal” immigrants, have been created over time. To this end, we will pay particular attention to how race, labor, gender, and sexuality have factored into the creation of immigration laws, and, at the same time, dictated the production of migrants’ status and identities. This course will conclude with readings and discussions that probe how immigration policies might evolve in the future, and how climate change, political instability, and the return of isolationism and nationalism will impact human movement on a global scale.

At the core of this course will be a public humanities project, aimed at audiences beyond the university, which will focus on Displaced Persons and refugees in Carinthia in the aftermath of World War II. Using original primary sources from the United Nations Archives and the British National Archives, students will curate blog posts that use these materials to explore and explain migration and asylum in this era.

Literature

Tara Zahra. The Great Departure: Mass Migrationfrom Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World. New York: W.W. &Norton Company, 2017. 

Examination information

Im Fall von online durchgeführten Prüfungen sind die Standards zu beachten, die die technischen Geräte der Studierenden erfüllen müssen, um an diesen Prüfungen teilnehmen zu können.

Grading scheme

Grade / Grade grading scheme

Position in the curriculum

  • Besonderer Studienbereich Besonderer Studienbereich Friedensstudien (SKZ: 900, Version: 05S)
    • Subject: Erweiterungsbereich (Optional subject)
      • Additional Courses from other Curricula ( 0.0h / 0.0 ECTS)
        • 552.336 Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
  • Bachelor's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Subject: Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlich ausgerichtetes Wahlfach (Compulsory elective)
      • 9.2 Issues in Culture ( 0.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
        • 552.336 Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 4., 5. Semester empfohlen
  • Bachelor's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Subject: Freie Kombination (Compulsory elective)
      • 10.1 Freie Kombination ( 0.0h SE / 12.0 ECTS)
        • 552.336 Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 5., 6. Semester empfohlen
  • Bachelor's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 612, Version: 10W.3)
    • Subject: Culture (Compulsory elective)
      • Issues in Culture ( 2.0h SE / 7.0 ECTS)
        • 552.336 Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US (2.0h SE / 7.0 ECTS)
  • Master's degree programme Game Studies and Engineering (SKZ: 992, Version: 17W.2)
    • Subject: Gebundenes Wahlfach (Compulsory elective)
      • Module: Game Studies
        • Issues in Culture ( 0.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          • 552.336 Issues in Culture: Gate-keeping Nation - The Politics of Migration Control in the US (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
            Absolvierung im 1., 2., 3. Semester empfohlen

Equivalent courses for counting the examination attempts

This course is not assigned to a sequence of equivalent courses