We expect many students to explore their own ethnic roots as part of this exercise. The result is a substantial term paper that students post on their own WEB pages. In the last 5-6 weeks of the course, the lectures are devoted to discussion of conceptual and analytical problems in the context of the term papers and discussion of emerging results. The last one or two weeks of the main lecture is broken down into a series of small group tutorials for discussion. Not all of the sources for term papers are found on the Internet, but we expect students to start with GAHM and the Internet.
Students also use the published literature on American immigrants and ethnic relations.
Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History. All students will read this anthology in the first half of the course. In the second half, students will read at least one work relevant to the major subject of their term paper, plus one relevant to the comparison between their major subject group and some other group. The Transplanted Chan, Sucheng. Chinese Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century Cinel, Dino.