2015 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers: The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands- UCLA

Seminar director: Roger Waldinger, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, UCLA

“The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and their Homelands” is a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers, to be held at the University of California, Los Angeles from June 15 through July 17, 2015. The seminar is open to 16 NEH summer scholars from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds. Principally oriented to teachers of American undergraduate students, the seminar is open to qualified independent scholars, and will include two full-time graduate students.

The seminar is designed to focus on the explicitly cross-border aspects of international migration, looking at the relationships between emigrants, communities of emigration, and emigration states in global and historical perspective. The seminar moves beyond U.S. borders to connect with the literatures on transnationalism and diasporas, relatively new subfields characterized by great ferment and innovation. That excitement is well justified, as these newer approaches take the study of migration past the U.S.-centrism that has long prevailed, highlighting a phenomenon that recurs across immigration societies internationally and that can only be understood by attending to feedbacks occurring in the societies of emigration. Moreover, following the connections between places of immigration and places of emigration has had salutary methodological results, leading scholars to engage in multi-sited research, a challenging but highly fruitful endeavor.

The seminar will engage in sustained discussion of texts, hear lectures, and venture into the field to make the most of the opportunities presented by studying immigration in the U.S.’s premier immigrant metropolis. For more information about the program, the themes we plan to discuss, and readings, click here: http://www.international.ucla.edu/migration/summerseminars/home.