Coe College Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar Mae Ngai

Date: 2/11/2016
Time: 7:30 PM TO 9:00 PM

1220 First Avenue NE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

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Event Description: Professor of History and Lung Professor of Asian-American Studies at Columbia University Mae Ngai will present “The United States as a Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of an Idea” at this year’s Phi Beta Kappa lecture. In the last several years, a new immigrant rights movement has swept the United States, focusing on reforming immigration laws to give legal status and citizenship to the 11 million undocumented immigrants. A common appeal made by Dreamers and other immigrant rights activists is their claim of belonging to U.S. is grounded in the history of America as a nation of immigrants. This is, of course, a central trope of American history. Many Americans believe that the democratic and inclusive character of our society—specifically our ethno-racial diversity, and lack of hierarchy based on one’s birth, and the opportunity for socio-economic advance—are most brightly illuminated by the immigrant experience. Without denying the power of the “nation of immigrants,” in this lecture, Ngai puts this idea under scrutiny, by considering its empirical validity, the origins of the idea, and its uses and abuses. In particular Ngai will test the idea by comparing and contrasting the experience and conditions of possibility for socio-economic mobility for the two great waves of labor migration to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century and at the turn of the 21st.


Directions:
Coe College Kesler Lecture Hall in Hickok Hall

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