Professor: Tobin Hansen
4 credits
In this class, we will explore the nature and meanings of human-object relationships, particularly the possessions migrants carry and have confiscated near the U.S.-Mexico border by U.S. immigration agents. These objects—cell phones, wallets, government-issued identification, jewelry, keys, books, rosaries, photographs, and prayer cards—are intimate, personal, or practical and illuminate migrants’ experiences. We will also analyze human migrations in and around the U.S.-Mexico borderlands since the 19th century and deportation from the United States. Lastly, we’ll examine service to community in the context of university learning.
Course activities include 1) reading scholarly texts and writing about and discussing them, 2) working in small research groups to create materials for classmates and facilitate class discussion, 3) crafting an Object Project that combines visual and written elements to highlight migration experiences, and 4) writing reflections on learning. A final course activitity is 5) an all-class service project, seeking to contact migrants in the United States, Mexico, or elsewhere and return some of the approximately 400 sets of migrants’ property confiscated by immigration agents, not returned, and currently housed at the CHC. Course activities require time dedicated out of class, sometimes to work in small groups with classmates.
We will serve as stewards of migrant belongings in the classroom and be expected to treat the objects and communications with care and thoughtfulness. This course will challenge our complex problem-solving skills and flexible-thinking skills and may elicit strong emotional responses. The sets of migrants’ property comprise cold cases from 2008 to 2023 that a non-profit in Arizona was unable to return. We will be challenged to work through topics of justice, hardship, and social suffering as well as the difficulties, and benefits, of small- and large-group decision-making and collaboration.