Brown Bag Lunch: Dr. Judith Freidenberg

 

The Center for the History of the New America welcomes you to attend the second session of our new brown-bag discussion series! Light refreshments will be provided, but please bring your lunch to listen to Maryland’s Judith Freidenberg give a talk entitled: Circulation of Knowledge on Immigrant Issues: A Case from Prince George's County.

 

Knowledge about immigration tends to be compartmentalized, with conflicting information provided to the public by government documents, the media, think tanks, and community organizations. The voices of immigrants themselves are often left out of the production of knowledge. This discussion seeks to address that issue.

 

Based on research funded by a seed grant and in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and the Center for the History of the New America, Professor Freidenberg taught two courses on the topic of immigration and oral history. From these courses, 16 video life history interviews were collected with immigrants in Prince George’s County, Maryland and edited into three short, thematic videos in order to disseminate these silenced voices and to stimulate public dialogue both on the life circumstances of immigrants as well as on the policies and politics of contemporary immigration. Professor Freidenberg will introduce and show a portion of these videos, and then lead a discussion on how immigrant voices add to the production and circulation of knowledge about immigration.

 

 

 

Judith Freidenberg is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Maryland at College Park. Her interest on migration and health – including foreigners moving to the United States and U.S. nationals residing abroad – is disseminated publicly at http://www.anthropologyoftheimmigrantlifecourse.org. Her latest book is The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of Argentine Identity (2009). She is currently working on a book on contemporary immigrant experiences in the United States.