Undergraduate Course: Coming to America: Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820-1930 (HIST10250)
Course Outline
School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | Between 1820 and 1930 American society was transformed by mass immigration. This course examines the history of the diverse range of migrant groups that arrived in the United States across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. |
Course description |
This course aims to introduce students to the wide range of historical writing on immigration and ethnicity in American history between 1820 and 1930 and addresses issues such as the varied nature of the immigrant experience, adjustment, integration and assimilation as well as the more complex process of the development of ethnic identities. An equally important consideration is to chart the anti-immigrant nativist reaction to large-scale immigration from the 1830s and assess how perceptions of the evolving American nation were influenced by notions of citizenship and belonging.
Outline of contents
1. Introduction
2. Leaving Home
3. The Rise of Mass Immigration
4. The Uprooted? Adjustment and Integration
5. Nativism and Becoming American
6. Immigrants in Industrial America
7. The 'New' Immigrants
8. Race and Nation
9. Ethnicity and Assimilation
10. Closing the Door: Restriction and Exclusion
11. Conclusion: A Nation of Immigrants?
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass or passes in 40 credits of first level historical courses or equivalent and a pass or passes in 40 credits of second level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Directors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Secretary to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 503783). |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | Visiting students should usually have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this) for entry to this course. We will only consider University/College level courses. |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate, by way of coursework and examination as required, command of the body of knowledge considered in the course;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework and examination as required, an ability to read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework and examination as required, an ability to understand, evaluate and utilise a variety of primary source material;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework and examination as required, the ability to develop and sustain scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence;
- demonstrate independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers.
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Reading List
Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (1992)
Thomas J. Archdeacon, Becoming American: An Ethnic History (1983)
John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (1985)
Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (1990)
Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (1988)
Roger Daniels, Guarding the golden door : American immigration policy and immigrants since 1882 (2005)
Leonard Dinnerstein and David Reimers, Ethnic Americans (5th ed., 2009)
Donna R. Gabaccia, Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History (2002)
Donna R. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective (2012)
Jon Gjerde, Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History (1998)
Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (2nd ed., 1973)
John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (rev. ed., 1963)
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (2nd ed., 2002)
M. A. Jones, Destination America (2nd ed., 1990)
Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914 (1992)
Stephan Thernstrom (ed.), Harvard Encyclopaedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980)
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Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Prof Enda Delaney
Tel: (0131 6)50 3755
Email: enda.delaney@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Diane Knowles
Tel: (0131 6)50 3781
Email: diane.knowles@ed.ac.uk |
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