HIST 360 Settling in America: Race, Ethnicity, and US Immigration Policy, 1790-1965
Debates over immigration to the United States have occurred since the first days of independence from Britain. From the Naturalization Act of 1790, which allowed only a free, white person to become a naturalized US citizen, to the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that abolished the nationality-based immigration quota system, you will peruse original voices of both big names and faceless, nameless individuals throughout the nation's ethnic history. Together, we shall explore several historical efforts to design the nation's complexion, and how newcomers, voluntary and involuntary, constantly challenged these "master plans."
The course invites you to converse with key historical characters in US history, such as Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, James Blaine, and Henry Cabot Lodge; but it also provokes you with the opinions, sometimes fierce criticism, from newcomers of African, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, and Latino descent. The discussion hinges on three historical questions: what did it take for a person to become an American? Who had the power to decide the standards? How should we tell the story about the tension between the "master plans," and the historical reality of race and ethnicity in America?