History 261 Section 5B: Case Studies of Chinese Immigration in California (Discussion Project #2)

 

Discussion Project (due at the end of Section 5B): Bring to class a museum-style exhibit based on twelve images found in the Library of Congress database The Chinese in California, 1850-1925. For each image, provide a typed caption of 1-2 sentences, written as if you were a museum curator explaining the historical context and the specific meaning(s) of the images in your exhibit for a general viewing public. In addition, provide a brief introduction for your exhibit as a whole, about one paragraph in length and not to exceed one single-spaced typed page. Detailed directions follow.

 

For background on the Chinese experience in California, you can refer to Chapter 8 of Limerick's Legacy of Conquest assigned for Section 5A. You can find additional relevant information in these four brief documents:

 

**California Workingmen's Party on Chinese Immigration (1878)

**Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

**Chinese Exclusion Convention in San Francisco (1901)

**Timeline of Chinese in California

 

In addition, each of the ten galleries on the Library of Congress exhibit's "Topical Overview Page" contains brief historical contexts introducing the major themes.

 

**The Chinese in California: Topical Overview

 

The "Topical Overview" link above is your main base for this discussion project. When you click on this link, you will find 9 image galleries, beginning with "Chinese and Westward Expansion" and ending with "Sentiment Concerning the Chinese." [The "San Francisco's Chinatown" link is not an image gallery].

 

When you click on a particular gallery, you will find a brief historical context for that particular topic. To get to the images, you have to click on the ">>Gallery" link that is near the top right corner of the page. You can choose "list view" or "gallery view" ["gallery view" is better]. Each page contains about 20 images, and you can keep scrolling through the gallery's database by clicking on "Next Page" at the bottom. Don't just look at the first images that appear, as there are many in each gallery.

 

As you begin, read the historical contexts for each gallery and then choose at least five of them to investigate further through the "gallery" link at the top right. There are tens of thousands of documents in this database, and you certainly cannot look at anywhere close to all of them. Instead, spend about 2-3 hours exploring the various galleries and looking at a broad selection of images and documents before choosing the twelve items from five different topical galleries that you believe will make a compelling museum exhibit. Make an effort to choose a range of images/documents that allow you to examine:

 

           **how the Chinese viewed themselves and their own community in addition to how they thought about the American nation

           **how outsiders viewed and portrayed the Chinese

           **the relationship between documentary images of Chinatown versus the images found in popular culture

           **why so many white Californians supported policies of racial exclusion and believed Chinatown to be so dangerous

           **what these images of race and immigration tell us about western history and American national identity in the late 1800s and early 1900s

 

Print out the twelve images you select (perhaps by integrating them into a Microsoft Word document), and think carefully about the order of your presentation. Write 1-2 sentence captions for each image/document, providing both historical context and specific analysis of the cultural meanings and political perspectives in these primary sources from the past. In writing captions, you can rely on the Limerick book and the Lecture 5B and the Library of Congress database, but if you quote directly from any of these sources then you should provide a citation.

 

Bring your museum exhibit to discussion section along with a brief (maximum one single-spaced page) introduction to the portfolio.