The Freedom to Move: Addressing Immigration, Emigration, and Forced Migration in U.S. History

FAIN: GE-50316-10

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (New York, NY 10036-5900)
Susan F. Saidenberg (Project Director: January 2010 to December 2011)

Planning of a traveling exhibition and a companion website that examine migration and mobility as enduring themes in U.S. history.

The Freedom to Move: Addressing Immigration, Emigration and Forced Migration in U.S. History is a planning grant from September 2010-August 2011 that draws upon recent historical scholarship to develop an interactive traveling exhibition and a web site that will allow visitors to confront the universal human experiences of searching for work, making secure homes, and enjoying freedom and safety, and to consider why migration so often generates controversy and alarm in a nation that prides itself on being a "Nation of Immigrants." It will invite viewers to think about how migrations -- by choice and by coercion -- are motivated and to ponder whether and how nations can shape, limit, or force the choices of millions of individuals. The planning process will include meetings of scholars to plan and refine questions and content, archival research, design of interpretive and interactive formats, and a recruitment plan for libraries, leading to an implementation proposal.