Examine how the work of Sherman Alexie – as novelist and scriptwriter – has challenged stereotypes with humour and irony, and presented native American life as complex and ambiguous. See Alexie's official website for a range of useful materials.
Consider the work of the film-maker Joan Micklin Silver. Hester Street and Crossing Delancey are both different types of film that address issues and tensions involved in the historical and contemporary processes of assimilation. See Joan Micklin Silver | Jewish Women's Archive Discuss the ways in which the films concentrate on the old and the new, ideas about ‘American’ values, marriage and gender.
Mexican-Americans are a major immigrant group in the USA; examine how the experience of border crossing and migrant life is dealt with in Rubén Martinez’s Crossing Over, Luis-Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway, T.C. Boyle’s TheTortilla Curtain, the films of Gregory Nava - El Norteand East LA, or in the film Alambrista.
Watch the film Sin Nombre (Director,Cary Joji Fukunaga 2009) about contemporary border-crossers who long for the age-old possibility of life in the USA. On crowded trains they flee north from the dark, closed, almost Gothic world of Mexico’s Mara Salvatucha ganglands defined by acts of violence and brutal allegiance to a self-perpetuating system of control and circularity and is held in sharp contrast to the occasional sweeping landscape glimpsed from the crowded, threatening roof of the train heading to El Norte. Examine how the represents the journey North and the promise of life in the USA compared to the world south of the border.
How helpful is the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ immigrants in explaining the history of American immigration?
Examine, through the use of different Native American texts, how the importance of story-telling is related to ethnic identity and continuity.
Examine the distinctive features of community life in the Jewish ghettos of American cities in the early twentieth century. (You may, if you wish, substitute another immigrant group for the Jews, for example, Mexican Americans.)
Examine the origins, aims and policies of the Americanisation movement in twentieth-century America.
Examine the experience of any one significant group of contemporary immigrants in the United States as represented in first-hand accounts and how these have been represented in film. See T. Dublin (1993) as a source, alongside films such as Alamo Bay; Avalon, East LA;Mississippi Masala;Star Maps;House of Sand and Fog;andGran Torino.
Watch a copy of Kent MacKenzie’s film The Exiles (1961) and listen to the commentary on it by Sherman Alexie and Sean Axmaker. How does the form and content of the film explore and represent urban Indians? One critic wrote ‘Mackenzie’s sparkling, moody black-and-white images of what might be called the Native American Diaspora ... depict a classic American story of aspiration and tragedy. It is beautiful and devastating’ (Armond White, New York Press). Discuss the possible meanings of this statement with close reference to the film.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 – A wide-ranging collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression
Ellis Island - From the National Park Service, Dept. of the Interior
Tangled Roots - An exploration of the histories of Irish Americans and African Americans