LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature

Syllabus for fall 2007

LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature

Fall 2007, University of Houston-Clear Lake

Thursdays, 10am-12:50pm, Bayou 1215

A multicultural course with a unifying theme:

the story of coming to America,

becoming American, and changing America.

( . . . & subplots! . . . )

generational conflicts * the family and the nation

* ethnicity & gender * the shock of America *

the memory of the homeland

Course Texts

Short-Fiction Anthology

Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land (2^nd ed., 2002)

Poetry Anthology

Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (1994)

Jewish-American immigrant novel

Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (1925)

Anglo-American non-fiction (dominant culture)

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1620-1647)

(read with selections from the Exodus of the Bible)

Summary of Graded Assignments (details below)

(Percentages for final grade are only approximate. Numbers are not used in calculating final grades.)

· Midterm examination + Research Report Proposal (18 October; 30%.)

· Final Examination including Research Report (6 December; 50%).

· Class participation, preparation, attendance, quiz grades, presentations, email submissions. Dates for presentations assigned at second class (20%).

Course webpage: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333

Instructor: Craig White

Phone: 281 283 3380 Email: whitec@uhcl.edu

Office: 2529-8 Bayou Office Hours: T 2:30-3:30; Th 1-2; Th 7-8 & by appointment

Caveat: Data stated and contracts implied in this syllabus may change with minimal notice through fair hearings at class meetings.

Course Objectives:

Objective 1. To identify the immigrant narrative as a fundamental story or model of American culture and to recognize its relations to "the American Dream” and other essential multicultural American narratives and identities, especially the “minority” (objective 3) and the “dominant culture” (obj. 4).

Such applications expand this course beyond immigrant literature to the entire multicultural landscape of American literature: minority, immigrant, and dominant cultures, all of which may be defined by the immigrant narrative. Premises:

1a. Multicultural studies are part of the USA’s educational and literary landscape, and may be expected to remain so for the foreseeable future, at least in public schools and higher education. (Religious schools and home schooling may differ.)

1b. Most surveys of multicultural literature do not develop formal standards for deciding which ethnic groups are included or why. Such choices may be based on precedent but otherwise do not develop systematic criteria for inclusion, exclusion, or grouping of ethnicities. Instead, such surveys tend to “promote tolerance” and “celebrate difference.” They declare or imply that “each group is unique” and “everyone gets a turn.” Different ethnic or gender identities may unify in terms of common “victimization” or oppression by the dominant culture, whether white, male, or upper-class / corporate.

1c. The casual inclusiveness of most multicultural surveys generates potential problems. American society comprises so many ethnic groups that no survey can cover them all. Which ethnic groups must be included? What larger categories can ethnic groups be classified within? Is it possible or desirable to move beyond “celebrating difference” and exposures of “victimization?” Can different ethnic groups share common cause? (This raises a sensitive question: Can anyone identify with ethnic or gender groups other than their own? If so, is such identification possible only through a shared sense of victimization?)

1d. American Immigrant Literature “celebrates difference” by surveying texts by a wide range of American ethnic groups. However, it also develops a unified field or standard for distinguishing, grouping, and evaluating different ethnic groups by using the immigrant narrative as a “yardstick.” Instead of only celebrating difference and leaving each ethnic group to itself, our course uses the immigrant narrative as a way to measure multicultural differences between immigrant, minority, and dominant cultures and their potential to assimilate to a shared experience and identity.

Objective 2. To chart the dynamics, variations, and stages of the immigrant narrative.

Background: No single text tells the whole story of immigration, but the larger narrative is always implicit. Most Americans are broadly conscious of the immigrant narrative’s prominent features and values.

Examples may be provided by any ethnic group whose people write about move and adapting to America: Irish, Italians, Chinese, Salvadorans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese, Ukrainians, modern Nigerians, Vietnamese, Germans, Hindu, Pakistani . . . a list too numerous and growing ever to complete!

Two recurrent narrative or cultural themes:

Assimilation as “melting pot” in which ethnic differences disappear or submerge through intermarriage, common language, and shared opportunity or ideology as a result of shared background in “a nation of immigrants.”

Two warnings about “assimilation”:

· The melting pot metaphor may be limited where racial minorities are considered, leading to other metaphors like “the rainbow” or “a quilt.”

· Assimilation can work both ways: the dominant culture sometimes absorbs practices and products brought by immigrants or other ethnic groups, such as values, language, food, etc.

The term “minority” is used loosely in popular speech and government. The label of a “Model Minority” is often applied to a new immigrant group that exemplifies or fulfills the ideals implicit in the immigrant narrative.

· A century ago Jewish immigrants were the “model minority,” as their children became well-educated professionals. Asian Americans now fit this pattern.

· These “ideal immigrants” take advantage of economic and educational opportunities (often associated with music, math, and medicine).

· In terms of assimilation, such groups often assimilate economically and educationally while maintaining ethnic identity in religion and ethnic customs (which may contribute to family stability and low crime rates). This resistance to assimilation imitates a leading quality of the dominant culture (obj. 4).

· The “model minority” is often contrasted with so-called “problem minorities,” especially the true minority groups of African and Native America.

· Often used as an argument against affirmative action, the concept of the “model minority” may confuse race / ethnicity with class / history.

Basic stages of the Immigrant Narrative

· Stage 1: Leave the Old World (“traditional societies” in Europe, Asia, or Latin America).

· Stage 2: Journey to the New World (here, the USA & modern culture)

· Stage 3: Shock, resistance, exploitation, and discrimination (immigrant experience here overlaps with or resembles the minority experience)

· Stage 4: Assimilation to dominant American culture and loss of ethnic identity (departs or differs from minority experience)

· Stage 5: Rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity (usu. only partial)

Is the immigrant narrative comparable to a conversion experience?

Character by generation: What are the standard associations or identities of distinct generation? (These numbers aren’t fixed—variations occur in every family’s story)

· first-generation as “heroic” but “clueless”

· second-generation as “divided” between traditional identities of homeland or ethnic group and modern identity of assimilated American; bi-cultural and bi-lingual

· third generation as “assimilated” (Maria becomes Kristen, Jiang becomes Kevin)

Narrator or viewpoint: Who writes the immigrant narrative?

· First-generation? (rare, except among English-speaking peoples)

· Second-generation? (standard: children of immigrants learn English, usually in public schools, and use the language to explore conflicts between ethnic and mainstream identities)

Setting(s): Where does the immigrant narrative take place?

· Homeland? Journey? America? Return to homeland?

· "Ethnic enclave" (e. g., ghetto, barrio) as transition or limbo between 2 worlds.

How much does the Immigrant Narrative overlap or align with the American Dream narrative? Are they one and the same, or simply co-formal? In what ways are they potentially distinct from each other? What values (such as individualism, aspiration, modernization) do they share?

Objective 3. To compare and contrast the immigrant narrative with the minority narrative—or, American Dream versus American Nightmare:

· Differences between immigrants and minorities:

The two most persistent or least-assimilated minority groups, African Americans and Native Americans, were not immigrants, at least in any normal sense. (Native Americans were already here, and immigration was the “American Nightmare” instead of the American Dream. African Americans, unlike traditional immigrants, did not choose to come to America, but were forced; instead of opportunity, they found slavery.)

These differences between immigrant and minority histories lead to different “social contracts.” Since immigrants voluntarily chose to come to America, they are expected to conform to the American Dream story of freedom and opportunity. Minorities did not freely choose the American Dream and may speak of exploitation instead of opportunity.

Immigrants typically assimilate and lose their ethnic identity within 1-3 generations. Minorities remain distinct or maintain distinct communities. For historical, cultural, or color-code reasons, however, some immigrants run the risk of what sociologists call “downward assimilation”: instead of climbing the educational-economic ladder and assimilating to the dominant culture, any ethnic group (including whites) may become entrenched in separatist, traditionalist, gender-hierarchical behaviors that resist assimilation and advancement.

· Overlap between immigrant and minority identities:

Immigrants may experience “minority” status in early generations. Immigrants may suffer discrimination and marginalization by the dominant culture on account of racial and cultural differences as long as those differences are visible or audible. With few exceptions, the only immigrants who are treated as minorities are those who are not yet assimilated.

· “New World Immigrants,” including Mexican Americans, other Latinos, and Afro-Caribbeans, may create an identity somewhere between the immigrant and minority patterns.

“New World” or “Western Hemisphere” immigrants have dominated recent immigration to the U.S., altering the model implicit in the “model minorities / immigrants” developed by Jewish Americans and Asian Americans.

· In contrast to ideal immigrants’ commitment to American national identity and opportunity, New-World immigrants may stay loyal to their nearby home countries and remember historical resentments toward the American culture and nation.

· Mexican American immigrant experiences and identities relative to the USA are unique in ways that may make them more ambivalent regarding assimilation to the dominant American culture. Mexican immigration is unique in scale. Assimilation proceeds, but maybe at a slower pace.

· Other Hispanic immigrant groups like Puerto Ricans may have similarly ambivalent attitudes toward assimilation and difference.

· For Afro-Caribbeans, the immigrant experience may be compromised by genetic or color-based association with the African American minority. On the flip-side, the experience of Afro-Caribbeans as a majority culture on the islands may cultivate more demanding public identities and attitudes.

· See also Objective 6 regarding the “New Immigrant Identity”

· “The Color Code”

· Literature represents the ultra-sensitive subject of skin color only occasionally, but with important associations or consequences for identity and destiny.

· Western civilization transfers traditional values associated with “light and dark”—good & evil, rational / irrational—to people of light or dark complexions, with implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc.

· However, the inevitable mixing of people and races in a mobile culture continually creates “New Americans,” whether in appearance or status.

Objective 4. To identify the “dominant culture” (sometimes referred to as a “core culture”) to which immigrants assimilate, particularly in terms of class, ethnicity, gender or family life, and religion. In brief, this section of the course tries to answer, “What kind of culture do immigrants assimilate to?”

As this vast subject resists identification and analysis, the objective concentrates on another variation of the immigrant narrative termed “National migration.”

· Unlike the normal immigration pattern of individuals or families immigrating with intentions or expectations that they will assimilate to their new home, some groups immigrate as communities with the intention of not assimilating.

· These groups are often identified by religion, but religion may be interwoven with all aspects of community, including economics and ethnic relations.

· Under special circumstances, such groups may become the dominant culture of a nation or area.

Examples of national migration and dominant culture for objective 4

Our deep historical model for “national migration” is the ancient Jews who migrated from Egypt to Canaan in the Bible’s Exodus story. Unlike the standard model of immigrants as families and individuals, the Jews moved as a group and resisted assimilation and intermarriage with the Canaanites. American Jews have followed this pattern until recent generations, when intermarriage has increased.

Our American historical model for “national migration” is the “Great Migration” of English Pilgrims and Puritans to early North America, where they imitated the Jews in Canaan by refusing to intermarry or assimilate with the American Indians. This English culture became the basis for the USA’s dominant culture. In brief, this is the culture to which American immigrants assimilate.

A relatively recent internal example of “national migration” might be that of the Mormons in the 1800s from the Midwest to Utah, where they became the dominant culture. Some elements of national migration and correspondence to Exodus may also appear in the “great migration” of African Americans from the Old South to the urban North during slavery times, in the early twentieth century, and in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

(The remaining objectives focus more exclusively on the immigrant narrative.)

Objective 5. To observe and analyze the effects of immigration and assimilation on cultural units or identities:

· family

In the traditional Old World, extended families prevail. In the modern New World, assimilated people live in nuclear families (often divorced) or by themselves.

· gender

In the Old World, gender identities tend to be traditional, with divisions of power, labor and expression. In the New World, gender may be de-emphasized in favor of equality, merit, and other gender-neutral concepts.

· community and laws

Old World culture is often organized by traditional or family laws and a distant, autocratic state. New World culture conforms to impersonal laws and a democratic, regulated, but self-governing state.

· religion:

In traditional societies of the Old World, religion and political or cultural identity are closely related. Modern cultures of the New World tend toward a secular state and private religion.

Religion is the identity factor that resists assimilation the longest—but not necessarily forever. Catholic, Islamic, or Hindu immigrants may generally conform to mainstream dominant culture while resisting conversion to the Protestant or Evangelical Christianity of the dominant culture. The future?

· Demographics:

Immigrants often come from third-world, traditional, or subsistence societies that value high rates of childbearing in the face of high infant mortality and short life spans. In contrast, first-world cultures like blue-state America, Canada, western Europe, and Japan limit numbers of children for the sake of prolonging individual lives. The resulting differences in family dynamics and education and income levels fuel many of the conflicts between the dominant and immigrant cultures.

· Finally, How do immigrants change America?

Objective 6. To contrast the “New Immigrant Model” with the “Old Immigrant Model.”

· “Old Immigrant Model”: Because of the danger and cost of journey by boat, past immigrants found it more difficult to return and were expected to cut ties to the Old World in order to assimilate to American culture

· “New Immigrant Model”: Improved communications and air transportation may enable recent immigrants to feel less pressure to forget the homeland and to assimilate to American culture as rapidly as earlier immigrants

· The biculturalism and bilingualism of “New Immigrants” may contribute to or reflect an emerging global identity in which human beings are less defined or restricted by nationality.

· “Vertical immigration”: as immigration has increased and trade and national barriers have fallen, societies may be becoming less identified by nationality and more by economics and technology: first world-third world, upper class-lower class, highrise-street, electronic media-manual labor.

Objective 7. To observe competing economic ideals or states exposed by immigrant literature.

7a. To identify communal or utopian elements such as Bradford’s discussion of the commonwealth and Jewish immigrants’ interests in Marxism, as well as “Old World” concepts of community, social obligations, and limits.

7b. To discuss immigrants’ shock at and adaptation to American economic models, variously identified as Social Darwinism, competitive individualism, laissez-faire, freemarket, high-growth capitalism

7c. A surprising feature in immigrant literature (and perhaps elsewhere): the identification of shopping and sexuality. (Consistent with Darwinian survival through competitive sexuality)

Objective 8. The Immigrant Narrative and the Teaching Profession

To monitor the importance of public education to the assimilation stage of the immigrant narrative.

8a. To consider the significance of free secular education as a starting point for the American Dream of economic success. (first rung on the ladder available to all; instruction in common language; separation from household religious traditions)

8b. Teachers of literature and language arts must consider a variety of issues relative to immigrant and minority culture

· Should we teach multiculturalism or assimilation? What balance between ethnic “identity,” “tradition,” and “roots” on one hand, and American “conformity,” “modernization,” and “mobility” on the other? Should people be "hyphenated Americans" or "just Americans."

· How much does literature concern language instruction and formal mechanics and terminology of literature, and how much does it concern a student-friendly way to teach culture and social skills?

Email and webpage contributions

This course has a webpage featuring basic information about the course and student models of required assignments. The web address is

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333. If convenient, install it as a “favorite” on your web browser for easy access.

Each student must make contributions to the webpage through the instructor via email or other electronic means.

Required email contributions:

1. Presentation handout or posting

2. Research report proposal

Optional email contributions:

· midterm exam

· final exam & research report

Email address:

Send all emails to whitec@uhcl.edu. Note the "c" at the end of "whitec." If you send the email to "white" only, it goes to the wrong professor.

Contents and attachments:

Try both of the following

· Paste the contents of the appropriate word processing file directly into the email message.

· “Attach” your word processing file to an email message. (My computer and most of its programs work off of Microsoft Word 2000. The only word processing program my computer appears unable to translate is Microsoft Works, though Microsoft Word is fine, as are most others. If in doubt, save your word processing file in "Rich Text Format" or a “text only” format.)

If you have trouble reaching me by email, save your word processing file to a 3½“ floppy disk and give it to me. If you put your name on the disk, I’ll eventually return it to you.

Student computer access: Every enrolled student at UHCL is assigned an email account on the university server. For information about your account and password, call the university help desk at 281 283 2828.

Reassurances: You are not graded on your expertise in electronic media but on your intelligence in reading literature, discussing it, and writing about it. I’ve tried similar email exercises for several semesters; a few students encounter a few problems, but, if we don’t give up, these problems always work out. Your course grade will not suffer for mistakes with email and related issues as long as I see you making a fair effort.

Descriptions of Graded Assignments

Midterm exam--Date: 18 October Relative weight: 30% of final grade

Format: open-book and open-notebook; in-class or by email

Time: The exam should take at least two hours to complete, but you may use the entire class period (2 hours and 50 minutes). In-class students will be given the exam at 10am and must turn it in by 12:50pm. All students may access the exam through the course webpage. Email students must return their exam by 2pm. The time is flexible to account for possible interruptions. However, email students should spend no more than 2 hours and 50 minutes in writing the exam, and they should keep a log indicating when they start and stop. (Pauses or interruptions are okay.)

Midterm contents

· Web review of previous midterms (plus or minus other student model assignments)

· Long essay on The Immigrant Narrative and the Minority Narrative.

· Research Report proposal

Development of midterm: A draft of the 2007 midterm is posted on our course webpage. This assignment will be refined and improved during class previews.

· My chief ambition for the fall 2007 midterm (and the final exam essay) is for students’ essays to become more literary and less cultural in focus, though both aspects will remain in play.

· Student input toward this end will be cultivated.

· My provisional plan is to frame essays questions to emphasizes the immigrant narrative and its variations as stories—How do stories create and process identity? How does the immigrant narrative serve this purpose in a mobile, pluralistic society?

Note on Provisional Research Report Proposal

As part of your midterm exam, you will write and submit a proposal for the Research Report that will be part of your final exam.

You may write this proposal ahead of time and simply turn it in with the midterm, or you may write it during the midterm period.

Assignment: Write 3-5 sentences identifying your probable topic for a research report, explaining why you chose it, and speculating on what you hope to learn and how. Explain the sources of your interest. Give some indication of what you already know and what you wish to find out.

Range of subjects: You have considerable freedom to choose, but a reader of your proposal should immediately recognize its relevance to a class on immigrant literature and identity.

Possibilities for topics:

· Literature associated with a particular immigrant ethnic group—identify which group you’re interested in, e. g. Chinese-American, Mexican-American, Turkish-American.

· History of a particular immigrant group plus or minus some literature or movements associated with them.

· An immigrant or ethnic group that mixes immigrant and minority traditions, e. g. Haitians, Jamaicans, or other West Indians; Mexican Americans?

· Literature associated with a particular immigrant writer, e. g. Gish Jen, Frank McCourt, Henry Roth, Crevecoeur. (This would be a career review with some bibliography of major writings.)

· Some other immigrant-literature-related topic, perhaps of a more formal literary nature focusing on narrative, language issues, publishing challenges, etc.

· Other topics or areas may be developed as the semester progresses. The main thing is for you to choose a topic you care about and want to learn about and share.

· The best way to get a sense of this report’s possibilities is to look at some previous models of the assignment on the course webpage.

Response to Research Proposal

· Student does not receive an announced letter grade for the proposal, only a “yes” or instructions for receiving a yes. Students will not lose credit for problems in reaching a topic as long as they are working to resolve these problems.

· The only way you can start getting into trouble over the proposal is if you simply don’t offer much to work with, especially after prompts from instructor. An example of a bad proposal is a single sentence that starts, “I’m thinking about . . . ” and ends with “ . . . doing something about race and gender.” Then for the question, “What do you think?” In these cases, a bad grade isn’t recorded, but notes regarding the paper proposal may appear on the Final Grade Report.

Final Exam with Research Report (6 December 2007)

Part 1: Research Report with bibliography or works cited (1-1.5 hours)

Part 2: Essay question regarding immigrant literature and dominant culture (national migration) (1-1.5 hours)

Relative weight: 50% of final grade Format: In-class or email

Time: The exam should take at least two hours and a half to complete, but you may use the entire class period (2 hours and 50 minutes). In-class students will be given the exam at 10am and must turn it in by 12:50pm. All students may access the exam through the course webpage. Email students must return their exam by 2pm. The time is flexible to account for possible interruptions. However, email students should spend no more than 2 hours and 50 minutes in writing the exam, and they should keep a log indicating when they start and stop. (Pauses or interruptions are okay.)

Final exam contents

· Long essay on The Immigrant Narrative and the “National Migration” pattern of the dominant culture.

· Research Report

Development of final exam: A draft of the 2007 final is posted on our course webpage. This assignment will be refined and improved during class previews.

· My chief ambition for the fall 2007 final exam is for students’ writing to become more literary and less cultural in focus, though both aspects will remain in play.

· Student input toward this end will be cultivated.

· My provisional plan is to frame essays questions to emphasizes the immigrant narrative and its variations as stories—How do stories create and process identity?

Long essay on Immigrant Narrative and “National Migration” pattern of the dominant culture: In response to a detailed question-assignment, you will write a complete essay identifying and distinguishing the standard immigrant narrative and the “national migration” pattern of the USA’s dominant culture, exemplified by the Exodus story and Of Plymouth Plantation, but also identifiable in other texts through our “Dominant culture moment” presentations.

Requirement: Make at least one reference to previous final exam answers on this topic in the “Model Assignments” section of our webpage.

Research Report

Format requirements

Title: Give your report a title

Length: approximately 4-6 paragraphs

Time: 1-1.5 hours

Works Cited: Include a list of your major research sources (at least four)

Assignment description: Write a complete report describing your research on your chosen subject.

· Student is responsible for having researched at least four sources on the subject before the exam.

· Organize the information you found and review how you may use it, either in your college career, teaching, or personal development.

· The emphasis is on information, not opinion and analysis, though some summary and evaluation is welcome and expected. It's a report foremost.

· You are encouraged to connect your findings to course objectives or texts.

Default organization: Describe your path of learning as a quest.

· What subject did you choose and why? What relevance to our course and/or to your life or career?

· What were your starting points in research? How did your subject or understanding change or develop?

· What did you learn? What was expected or unexpected? If you continued your research, what would you seek to know next and why?

Evaluation standards: Readability, competence levels, and interest.

· Readability: Your reader must be able to process what you're reporting. Given the pressures of a timed writing exercise, some rough edges are acceptable.

· Competence levels: quality of your research and comprehension of your subject

Interest: Make your reader *want* to process your report. Make the information meaningful; make it matter to our study of literature and culture.

Sources for research report:

You must refer to at least four outside sources. At least two sources must be “non-web”—i. e., from print sources or firsthand interviews. As one of your sources, you are encouraged to consider interviewing either representatives of your immigrant group or experts who may know something about this group.

Assignment description: Write a complete report describing your research on your chosen subject.

· Student is responsible for having researched at least four sources on the subject before the exam. These sources should be as varied as possible: web sources, personal interviews with teachers or experts, documentaries or encyclopedia articles, anything with trustworthy information on your subject.

· Organize the information you found and review how you may use it, either in your college career, extended research, teaching, or personal development.

· The emphasis is on information, not opinion and analysis, though some summary and evaluation is welcome and expected. It's a report foremost.