Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0227 - Beyond the Melting Pot

This course seeks to uncover the roots of today's debates about immigration and American identity in the interactions between Jewish immigrants of the turn of the 20th century and other immigrant and ethno-racial communities in the United States in the context of popular culture and literature. We will begin with debates about race, ethnicity and immigration in the nineteenth century as they took shape in relation to a rapidly modernizing American cultural landscape. We will progress through the twentieth century with particular attention to popular film, theater, literature, music, and other cultural products, examining how they represent the dynamics of assimilation vs. pluralism, intermarriage and secularization, racial and ethnic representations and performance, cross-cultural alliances and ruptures. This is a relatively intensive reading and writing course. The semester will culminate in a large-scale independent project.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research In this course, students are expected to spend 8-10 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.