Kulturgeschichte A Nation of Immigrants? Immigration, Racism, and Nativism in America from the Colonial Period to Trump
26
It is often said that the United States is a “nation of immigrants”. The idea is central to America’s self-understanding as an exceptional nation in which peoples with diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds live together in relative harmony. This image of E pluribus unum – ”out of many, one” – is also what America would like to show and model to the rest of the world. So when Donald Trump kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign by vilifying Mexican migrants as “drug dealers” and “rapists” and calling for the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border, did he violate what America essentially stands for? Surveying American history from the Declaration of Independence to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, this lecture series will explore the American idea of the “immigrant”. We will see how settlers of European descent came to understand themselves as “white natives” and to define Americanness in opposition to a host of “outsiders”: Indians, Africans, Chinese, Irish, Mexicans, Muslims. In essence, the lectures will propose that an openly xenophobic politician ruled the United States for four years not because he was an exception to the history of US nativism, but because he was its culmination. The lecturer will draw on a variety of historical, political, and cultural documents as well as his own life as a first-generation Mexican-American in California.
Mittwoch, 18.15 bis 19.45 Uhr, Online-Übertragung (Anmeldung erforderlich, siehe S. 4) 24. Februar
3. März
10. März
17. März
24. März
Dozent | Prof. PhD J. Jesse Ramírez, Assistenzprofessor für American Studies, Universität St.Gallen
31. März
