LECTURES, READINGS, FILMS & PERFORMANCES
Lectures offered through the Barnard Forum on Migration are supported by a bequest establishing the Weiss International Fellowship Fund to bring distinguished scholars in literature and the arts to Barnard.
These events are free and open to the public.
For more information,
contact Kathryn McLean, kmclean@barnard.edu,
212.854.6146
SPRING 2009 EVENTS:
WEST INDIAN IMMIGRATION IN THE BRONX
A lecture with Natasha Lightfoot
02/18 WEDNESDAY
7:00 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall
Natasha Lightfoot employs the oral histories of West Indians and their descendants, who came to the Bronx throughout the last 75 years, to paint a vivid portrait of both their settlement patterns and the formal and informal institutions they built as individuals, as extended families, as nationals in absentia, and as pan-Caribbean and global black communities. Natasha Lightfoot received her PhD from NYU in 2007 and is now an assistant professor of history at Columbia University. She is currently working on a book tracing grassroots resistance and identity formation among emancipated people in Antigua and on a new project about the West Indian migration in the Bronx, New York.
IMAGINING NATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS
Do Words Matter?
A lecture with Donna R. Gabaccia
03/05 THURSDAY 7:00 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall
International migration has shaped the building of many nations throughout the world. Why, then, is the United States almost alone in calling itself a nation of immigrants? In her exploration of how, when, and why Americans chose to call themselves a “nation of immigrants,” Donna Gabaccia explores how the availability of digitized archives is changing the way scholars pursue the traditional tasks of etymology, content analysis, and intellectual history. Donna R. Gabaccia holds the Rudolph Vecoli Chair in immigration history at the University of Minnesota, where she also directs the Immigration History Research Center. She has authored or edited over a dozen books, among them: Immigration and American Diversity; We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans; and From the Other Side: Women, Gender and Immigrant Life in the United States, 1820-1990.
LISTENING TO AFRICAN VOICES IN THE
INDIAN OCEAN SLAVE TRADE
04/16 THURSDAY 7:00 PM
802 International Affairs Bldg. Columbia University
Historians of Africa are currently engaged in an international collaborative project to retrieve the voices of Africans who lived during the era of the slave trade, whether as slaves or slave traders. In the context of slave trade across the Indian Ocean, these voices emerge almost entirely from nineteenth century sources and are bound up with British imperial expansion, the abolitionist movement, and missionary proselytization. Edward A. Alpers, professor and chair of history at UCLA, illuminates how this project raises important questions about translation, memory, and audience that affect the ways in which historians understand the testimonies of forced migration.
EMIGRATION, EXPATRIATION & IMMIGRATION
New Perspectives: A lecture with Nancy L. Green
04/22 WEDNESDAY
7:00 PM
Held Audtorium, 304 Barnard Hall
Immigration studies have long focused on arrival and settlement, but, as Nancy L. Green, professor of history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, reminds us, the immigrant is first an emigrant. Not only the conditions surrounding emigration but also the ways in which emigration is perceived by the state of origin are important elements in understanding the migration process, especially as “dual citizenship” has become increasingly accepted. Professor Green is the author of many studies on immigration, labor, and multiculturalism in France, the United States, and beyond, among them: The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Epoque and Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York.