April 29, 2012
Arizona vs. United States Explained
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the constitutionality of the Arizona state immigration law, SB 1070 (meaning Senate Bill 1070). The focus on Wednesday was Section 2(B) of the law, which makes it necessary for law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of each person stopped or arrested if there is some suspicion that the individual might be in the country without proper legal status. For a good digest of all that transpired, check out the SCOTUS blog here. Note that a decision probably won’t be handed down until late June.
Please note that you can find our final project website here.
March 4, 2012
This Week’s Agenda: Castle Garden and Oscar Handlin
The Castle Garden Emigrant Depot ca. 1871
This week, our two class sessions will meet in the Tanger Auditorium on the first floor of the Library (it is behind the reference desk to the right).
Tuesday: I will be giving a talk on the subject of my dissertation, the Castle Garden Emigrant Depot and the authority that ran it, the New York State Board of the Commissioners of Emigration. Castle Garden was the precursor to Ellis Island, processing roughly eight million immigrants at the southern tip of Manhattan from 1855 to 1890. Other sections of “Peopling of New York” have been invited.
Thursday: We will be back in the Tanger for a roundtable discussing the work of Oscar Handlin. The event is part of a one-day conference celebrating the life and work of Handlin, who earned his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College. Handlin just passed away in September 2011 at age 95 (you can read his New York Times obit here). This conference also marks the fact that Handlin donated his papers to the Brooklyn College Library. One of the discussants will be Yale historian Matthew Frye Jacobson, author of the “More Trans-, Less National” essay from which we read excerpts at the start of the course. I strongly recommend attending other conference sessions if possible, and I have inquired about whether or not I can take you all to the lunch event at 12:30pm (I hope to have word back on that by Monday). You can check out the schedule of the day’s events here and a flyer with even more detail here.
Essay Assignment: I have uploaded the guidelines for the third paper in the right-hand column under “Course Documents.” Please note that the due date is Tuesday, March 20th, but I want you to hand in a thesis paragraph a week before (Tuesday, March 13).
Web Discussion of Readings: Since we will not have a traditional class meeting this week, we will be relying heavily on the web forum to raise issues about this week’s readings. I will need “volunteers” to write the lead questions for each day’s readings. The “volunteers” will be from among folks who have not written them yet; see my email for further details. As of Sunday morning, I have not been able to upload the optional reading for Thursday (the “City of Immigrants” chapter from Gotham), but will do so later today.
Final Web Project: Please note that the class needs to come up with five or six goals for the tentatively titled “Brooklyn College Immigration Project” by Thursday. These need to be finalized and emailed to me by some point on that evening at the latest. I’m glad to see that you have begun to hash things out on the forum, but it seems as if you have considerably more work to do. I will try to add my two cents in the conversation over the next day or two, but please note that I leave it to you all to build consensus among yourselves.
February 8, 2012
Feb. 9: Interviewing A Classmate
We will spend most of tomorrow’s class time interviewing a classmate, so remember to:
1) Bring your laptop, phone, or other device that has enough memory to record a substantial amount of audio and has the capacity for easy playback and fast-forwarding, and preferably can be edit audio as well.
2) Make sure you read the Portelli and at least have a good idea of what the Foner is about, too. Please do carefully consider what the Portelli says before we start this exercise. Note that Sam and Christina have posted questions on the forum to help you think about both articles.
The questions I’d like you to consider asking your classmate are as follows. Keep in mind that some of these questions may not be relevant for some people, so you might have to be creative in adapting your questions.
1. How did your family become New Yorkers?
2. Would you consider you or anyone else in your family an immigrant?
3. Do you know what country or countries your family was from before coming to the U.S.?
4. Do you know why you or your family members left? Do you know when and what the situation was in the home country at the time?
5. Who made the trip? Who was left behind?
6. How did you or your family members get here? Did you/they stay somewhere else before arriving here?
7. Why was the U.S. the destination? Why not some other country?
8. Do you know what changes in lifestyle you or your family make when you came here?
9. Do you know what were your family’s hopes were when they came here? Have you realized these hopes?
Below are the pairings. We do have an odd number, so apologies to Sam, who was randomly selected to be stuck with me.
Chevey & Will Sarah A. & Jon F. Emily & Robin
Rachel & Chris John C. & Shivani Jon E. & Brienna
Ken & Paul Michael & Christina Danielle & Richard
Sara & Jon B. Sam & Brendan
February 6, 2012
Mexican-American Studies Outlawed in Tucson
Just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of the following debate going on in Arizona regarding the Tucson school system’s Mexican-American Studies curriculum that was recently outlawed. Here’s a New York Times editorial about it from a few weeks back. I just thought that it was incredibly relevant to our readings, especially “The Invention of Ethnicity” piece.
See you tomorrow.
February 2, 2012
Alabama’s Immigration Law and Its Consequences
I just wanted to remind you of the story from This American Life about the unintended consequences of the Alabama state law that cracks down on undocumented/illegal immigrants that I mentioned in our first class. Listen to “Act I: Alien Experiment” at this link here.
The piece does a good job of teasing out a range of ideas about what the appropriate role of governments should be in relation to immigration/migration.
February 1, 2012
Joe DeSalvo’s Demographics Presentation
You can download the PowerPoint presentation of Joe Salvo’s “The Demographic Highlights of a Changing New York” from the Macaulay Opening evening event here. I’m sure we’ll find it to be a valuable resource as we move ahead with the final project. Salvo is the Director of the Population Division of the New York City Department of City Planning.
January 30, 2012
Course Basics
From the Flatbush-Caton Market by Zach Dilgard for TimeOutNewYork
Welcome to Macaulay Seminar 2 at Brooklyn College, section TR11H (2618). You download the course syllabus here (and also in the column to the right). You can find most of the course readings at this password-protected page (I will let you know of the password by email). And you can find the discussion forum for the course here.
Before the first class, I would like you to post a response to a few questions I posed on the discussion forum. What does the word “immigrant” mean to you? Who is or who is not an immigrant? Do you consider yourself an “immigrant”? We’ll discuss your responses in class.
