American Studies 221
From Civil Rights to Immigrant Rights: The Politics of Race, Nation and
Migration Since World War II
Smith College, Spring 2015
Monday and Wednesday 2:40-4:00
Seelye 313
Professor Sujani Reddy
email: sreddy@amherst.edu
Office hours: Monday/Wednesday 4:00-5:00 and by appointment
Location: Nielson 405
Course Description:
This course centers ongoing struggles for social justice and liberation as a means for
investigating the landscape of U.S. social formation in what many term the “postcivil rights” era. Our inquiry will begin with the youth-led movements of the late
1960s and 1970s and move through to the present day. Topics will include
questions of empire, the criminalization of radical movements, the prison industrial
complex, the “war on drugs,” the diversification of immigration to the United States,
struggles over citizenship, “migrant labor, and immigrant detention and
deportation. Throughout we will pay attention to the relationships between
hierarchies of gender, sexuality, race, class and nation. Throughout we will pay
specific attention to the shape of contemporary debates about the issues we
examine.
This course counts towards the fulfillment of the Five Colleges
Asian/Pacific/American Studies Certificate Program. For more information on the
program and its requirements you can speak to me, as well as visit
www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/apa/certificate
Requirements:
Regular Attendance and Participation: 20%
Students must attend all classes, complete the readings, and participate in
classroom discussions and exercises. Depending on our final size this may also
include being called upon to prepare and present discussion questions in class. This
is not a lecture course where you are the passive recipient of information.
Participation is absolutely essential for the development of ideas and for my ability
to evaluate your learning process. You are allowed one unexcused absence. Any
absence beyond that requires documentation (a doctor’s note etc.).
Short Papers: 50%
These are response papers to the assigned readings and are meant to show
completion, comprehension and engagement with course materials and themes. In
general, each paper must first briefly outline the main argument(s) or themes of the
readings. Your response should develop from this summary and conclude with
questions, concerns or further reflection. You will have five of these due over the
course of the semester. The first one will be on Assata, as indicated on the
syllabus. For the next three you must choose one day’s worth of readings to write
on before the deadline for the reading response, as indicated on the syllabus. You
will be given a prompt at the beginning of each section. The last response is on How
Does It Feel to be a Problem? You are to hand your responses in class on the day
that your chosen reading is due, not by the deadline for that section. Please
plan ahead.
Your reading responses will not be graded individually but as a whole, at the end of
the semester. This means that you will hand them all back to me and I will give you a
grade for all five together.
Final Project: 30%
The final project can take many forms depending on class size, composition, and
conversation. More details to come.
Required Texts (available at the Grécourt Bookshop):
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in
America
Recommended:
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
Week 1
Monday Jan 26, Jan. 28
Intro/Remapping Civil Rights: the Young Lords
Screening: Pa’lante, Siempre Pa’lante (Iris Morales, dir.)
Week 2
Feb. 2, 4
Black Radicalism on Trial I
February 2: Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography, through Chapter 5
February 4: Assata, through Chapter 10
Week 3
Feb. 9, 11
Black Radicalism on Trial II
February 9: Assata, to the end
February 11: Assata discussion cont.
First Reading Response Due in Class
Week 4
Feb 16, 18 (Rally Day)
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
George Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From
Identity Politics, selections
Week 5: Feb 23, 25
“Law and Order”
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, Chapter 3, “The Color of Justice,” and Chapter
5, “The New Jim Crow”
Week 6
Feb. March 2, 4
From “Law and Order” to the International Monetary Fund
March 2: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, Chapter 6, “The Fire This Time”
Second Reading Response Deadline
March 4: Life and Debt (Stephanie Black, dir.)
Week 7
March 9, 11
Structural Adjustment and the Hip-Hop Generation
Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Loop 1
********Spring Break: Sat. March 14 to Sunday March 22************
Week 8
March 23, 25
Feminization of Labor Migration
March 23: Grace Chang – “Global Exchange: The World Bank, “Welfare Reform, and
the Trade in Migrant Women” and “Immigrants and Workfare Workers: Employable
but “Not Employed” from Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the
Global Economy
March 25: Third Reading Response Deadline
Week 9
March 30, April 1
Crimmigration
Families for Freedom, “Against Deportation and Delegalization”
Harsha Walia, Undoing Border Imperialism, selections
Week 10
April 6, 8
Immigrant Rights Now
Material related to 2006 protests, TBA
Oscar Martinez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging the Narcos on the Migrant
Trail, selections
Week 11
April 13, 15
Keep on DREAMing?
Material on youth movements for migrant justice, TBA
Shailja Patel, Migritude, selections
Fourth Reading Response Deadline
Week 12
April 20, 22
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in
America
Week 13
April 27, 29
How Does It Feel to be a Problem? Cont./Conclusion
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? cont.
April 27: Fifth Reading Response Deadline