294.27 sec. 001 - Immigration Law Through Film (Fall 2025)
Instructor: Leti Volpp (view instructor's teaching evaluations - degree students only | profile)
View all teaching evaluations for this course - degree students only
Units: 1
Grading Designation: Credit Only
Mode of Instruction: In-Person
Meeting:
W 3:35 PM - 5:25 PM
Location: Law 170
From September 03, 2025
To October 15, 2025
Course End: October 15, 2025
Class Number: 33123
Enrollment info:
Enrolled: 0
Waitlisted: 0
Enroll Limit: 50
As of: 04/07 07:13 AM
This one-credit course will provide an opportunity to learn about contemporary hot topics in immigration law. Each session will begin with our collective viewing of film clips, which will then frame our discussion, along with the assigned background readings. We will consider how visual images and rhetoric have worked together to shape the perception of immigrants and immigration, including in the 2024 Presidential campaign. In the process we will also be learning about substantive immigration law.
Films may include Sentenced Home (on refugees deported for criminal activity), A Well Founded Fear (on the affirmative asylum process), and Immigration Battle (on legislative attempts to create immigration reform), as well as others.
We will meet over seven sessions, beginning the week of September 1. Credit (P/F) will be given for attendance, active participation, and the completion of one ten-page (double-spaced) paper.
Paper:
The ten-page (double-spaced, 12-point font) paper should respond to any of these suggested prompts.
1) Pick at least two of the films we screened and explain how they changed or challenged your perception of immigration law.
2) Trace a particular theme across more than one film and discuss how the theme was portrayed. Suggested themes: justice, citizenship, exclusion, racism, borders, belonging, bureaucracy, foreignness, property, space, history, legality, criminality, refugees, undocumented immigration, the American Dream; theme of your choice.
3) Which of the films did you find the most - or least - compelling or effective? Why? Explain your answer by directly comparing films.
4) If this course were to be taught again, are there other films you would show instead? Please provide film titles and explain in detail why they would be preferable to particular films that we watched.
|
Requirements Satisfaction:
|
Exam Notes: (P) Final Paper
(Subject to change by faculty member only through the first two weeks of instruction)
Course Category: Social Justice and Public Interest
This course is listed in the following sub-categories:
Race and Law
If you are the instructor or their FSU, you may add a file like a syllabus or a first assignment to this page.
Readers:
No reader.
Books:
Instructor has not yet confirmed their textbook order, please check back later.