Crossroads in the Study of the Americas : Citizenship, Migration and Diasporas

Citizenship, Migration and Diasporas

Prof. Joshua Roth (Mt. Holyoke College)

Mt. Holyoke Registration: Anthropology 216

What does it mean to be a national? What does it mean to be a citizen? How are nationality and citizenship culturally constituted? Millions of people in this century have given or lost their lives for their countries. It is assumed that all individuals have a national identity and that such identities are essential and mutually exclusive. What makes the idea of the nation so compelling?

In this course, we first examine different forms of belonging in the modern nation state. Then we will turn to more recent theories of transnationalism and diaspora which suggest that new kinds of imagined communities are displacing that of the nation state, or leading to overlapping membership in multiple nation states. We will explore the forms that citizenship can take in the context of transnational or diasporic communities.

This course is part of a series of curricular initiatives involving the Five College Center, Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA). Such courses, as well as being cross-disciplinary, are intended to work across the institutional lines of the five colleges. The course will also be listed under the offerings of the Anthropology Department at Mt. Holyoke College and taught in conjunction with Colloquium 20, Citizenship in a Media Culture (Profs. Lisa Henderson and Barry O'Connell) at Amherst College. The two courses will often share guest lecturers, special media showings, and discussions involving students in both.

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	Citizenship, Migration and Diasporas Prof. Joshua Roth (Mt. Holyoke College) Mt. Holyoke Registration: Anthropology 216 What does it mean to be a national? What does it mean to be a citizen? How are nationality and citizenship culturally constituted? Millions of people in this century have given or lost their lives for their countries. It is assumed that all individuals have a national identity and that such identities are essential and mutually exclusive. What makes the idea of the nation so compelling? In this course, we first examine different forms of belonging in the modern nation state. Then we will turn to more recent theories of transnationalism and diaspora which suggest that new kinds of imagined communities are displacing that of the nation state, or leading to overlapping membership in multiple nation states. We will explore the forms that citizenship can take in the context of transnational or diasporic communities. This course is part of a series of curricular initiatives involving the Five College Center, Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA). Such courses, as well as being cross-disciplinary, are intended to work across the institutional lines of the five colleges. The course will also be listed under the offerings of the Anthropology Department at Mt. Holyoke College and taught in conjunction with Colloquium 20, Citizenship in a Media Culture (Profs. Lisa Henderson and Barry O'Connell) at Amherst College. The two courses will often share guest lecturers, special media showings, and discussions involving students in both.