URCAD Sneak Peek: Cassie Davis

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 09:42:35 -0400

Cassie is an American Studies major, and a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. She will be presenting her research: "Implications of Rhetoric: An Historical Newspaper Analysis of Immigration Policy" at Virtual URCAD 2020!

Abstract:

Nativism stems from an adverse reaction to immigration in the U.S., resulting in exclusionary immigration policies. This project studies nativism and racialized rhetoric surrounding immigration to identify parallels between the Trump administration’s Muslim ban and restrictive immigration rhetoric and legislation in two other periods of U.S. history. The legislative policies were chosen to represent a range of racialized experiences, as well as the indiscreet, racialized, and pejorative language used within the policies themselves. By comparing the rhetoric underpinning exclusionary policies of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Operation Wetback, and Executive Order 13780 (Muslim ban); this research will demonstrate how language connected to these policies is used to justify the discriminatory and inhumane treatment of immigrants in the US. Given that the breadth of sources is so vast, this project has only focused on rhetoric appearing in the New York Times. Additionally, this study examines scholarship on American nativism to analyze how such rhetoric describes migrants as criminal, amoral, or less-than-human, to justify biased and inhumane treatment of these potential migrants and encourage anti-immigrant sentiment among Americans.

Mentors: Tamara Bhalla, AMST and Sarah Fouts, AMST

Come see Cassie's presentation, and other undergraduate research and creative work , April 22-29th at URCAD.umbc.edu!