Urban Studies
Faculty/Student Collaborative Action Seminar
URBS-178-401, Cross Listed with: AFRC-078-401; HIST-173-401
TR 12:00 PM-1:30 PM
Ira Harkavy
CDUS
One of the seminar’s aims is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom and in the West Philadelphia community. Students work as members of research teams to help solve universal problems (e.g., poverty, poor schooling, inadequate health care, etc.) as they are manifested in Penn’s local geographic community of West Philadelphia.
The seminar currently focuses on improving education, specifically college and career readiness and pathways. Specifically, students focus their problem solving research at Sayre High School in West Philadelphia, which functions as the real world site for the seminar’s activities. Students typically are engaged in academically based service learning at the Sayre School, with the primary activities occurring on Mondays from 3-5. Other arrangements can be made at the school if needed.
Another goal of the seminar is to help students develop proposals as to how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply “consume,” societally-useful knowledge, as well as function as life long societally-useful citizens.
The Immigration Debate
URBS-220-401
T 1:30 PM-4:30 PM
Michael B Katz
BFS Sector II
In the years since the 1965 repeal of nationality based quotas, immigration to the United States has surged. Not only has the number of immigrants reached record highs, they have come from different places. During the last great wave of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, immigrants came largely from southern and eastern Europe. Today, they come from Latin America and Asia. Formerly, they usually settled in cities, moving outward as their prosperity increased; today, many bypass cities, heading straight for suburbs where a majority of immigrants now live. This new immigration has touched off a fierce national political debate that makes arguments about immigration which often contain assumptions or assertions about the history of immigration –often inaccurate – that influence positions on policy. There are few public issues in which history matters as much as it does for immigration.
This seminar will provide the historical background essential for framing discussions of immigration today. It will consider the origins, demography, and geography of immigration and will pay special attention to the history of immigration policy. Requirements include reading approximately one book per week, writing several short commentary papers on readings, and leading workshops on the primary sources for the study of immigration history.