HIST 339 - Immigration, Border Consciousness and the Chicano/a Experience

This course seeks to understand some of the issues that concern the contemporary United States immigrant population, in general, and the Mexican and Central American immigrant population, in specific. The historical experiences of the diverse immigrant populations that created and continue to create the economic and social foundation of the United States will be surveyed, along with the legal steps an immigrant must follow in order to achieve citizenship, in an effort to bring awareness to the contemporary human crisis. This course investigates through art, popular culture, and mass media, the histories of immigration, and the production of transnational identity in the geographic and cultural spaces of the United States. The course will explore immigration policy and its effects on the Chicano/Mexicana/Latino communities, in specific, and U.S. society as a whole. Special attention will be paid to border consciousness and border communities as historical sites of conflict and resistance. (Offered every year.) 3 credits