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Jewish Immigration, Popular Culture, and the Birth of the Comic Book
Background

The study of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries goes beyond the study of the ethnic make-up of the immigrants of this era, the challenges and hardships they encountered in the United States, and their place in urban and/or labor history. While each of those areas of immigration history holds an important place in any study of the twentieth century, these immigrants also made a significant contribution to the emerging twentieth century popular culture. Using the classroom as an historical laboratory, students can use primary sources to research, read, evaluate, and interpret one of the genres of this popular culture, the comic book, born in the twentieth century.

Objectives
  1. Students will be able to create a model to be used to evaluate the validity of historical evidence.

  2. Students will examine primary documents and factual references to analyze the history of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on Jewish immigration.

  3. Students will be able to identify the major social and economic events in the first half of the twentieth century.

  4. Students will be engaged in historical research and the critical analysis of popular culture in this era.

  5. Students will be able to examine the effects of this era of immigration on the cultural landscape of the United States into the twentieth century.




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