Admission is $25.00 including meals. Call 512-936-4649.
Space is limited, make your reservations today.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

• 4:30 p.m.
  Welcome and Introductions
• 5:00 p.m.
  Opening Address: Bring us your Tired, Your Poor, Your Hungry…or Not: Centennial Reflections on the Galveston Movement in American Immigration History (Dr. Suzanne Seriff, guest curator)
• 6:00-7:30 p.m.
  Reception: Museum Rotunda
  
  Exhibit Tour: Forgotten Gateway: Coming to America Through Galveston Island

Friday, September 11, 2009

• 8:00-9:00
  Bagel Breakfast: Meet and Greet
• 9:00-9:15
  Welcome and Introduction
• 9:15-11:00
  Session I: Cogs in the Wheel: A Closer Look The Galveston Movement and How it Worked as an Immigration Plan for East European Jews.
• Setting the Scene: "Galveston": An excerpt from Eileen Bluestone-Sherman’s award winning young adult fiction novel, Independence Avenue
• The Galveston Movement and Those Who Made it Possible: Agents of Passage; Angels of Mercy; Brokers of Employment, and Social Reformers (Rabbi Jimmy Kessler, Congregation B'nai Israel)
• Cowboys and Indigents: Galveston Movement Recipient Communities in Texas (Dr. Bryan Edward Stone, Del Mar College)
• The Unstable Image: Jewish Immigrants and Progressive-Era Anxieties, with Special Reference to the Galveston Movement (Dr. Eric Goldstein, Emory University) - Cancelled

• 11:00-12:00
  Session II: Story Time: Fictionalizing the Past
  Discussion by award-winning children’s authors Jan Hart and Eileen Bluestone-Sherman about the process of transforming real life oral histories from Galveston Movement immigrants into compelling fictional characters and plots for children.
  
  Sharing Stories: “Tell Us Your Story” Writing Forum


• 12:00-1:00pm
  Luncheon Keynote
  Redistribution & Anti-Semitism: The Galveston Project in the Struggle over Immigration Restriction (Dr. Stuart Rockoff, Institute of Southern Jewish Life)


• 1:00-2:45pm
  Session III: Broadening the Lens: The Larger Context of Early 20th century Immigration Policy and Practice to Restrict “Undesireable Aliens’
  
• Excerpt from West of Hester Street: Docudrama of the Galveston Movement, with introduction by film producer, Cynthia Salzman Mondel
• “The Quarantine Stations Along The Texas Mexico Border: Spreading Fear Of The Nation’s “Contaminated” Neighbors (Dr. John McKiernan Gonzalez, The University of Texas at Austin)
• Policing Gender and Sexuality at the Border: The Case of Ellis Island (Dr. Erica Rand, Bates College)
• Not Quite Closed Gates: Jewish Alien Smuggling in the Post-Quota Years: A Galveston Movement Post-script (Dr. Libby Garland, City University of NY)


• 3:00-4:00pm
  Session IV: Roundtable: The Galveston Movement as Immigration Solution: Was it Legal? Was it Effective?
  
  A Centennial Retrospective. Panelists include: Dr. Michael Churgin,The University of Texas at Austin , Dr. Bryan Stone, Dr. Stuart Rockoff. Dr. Libby Garland


• 4:00pm
  Conclusion: Dr. Suzanne Seriff
  “Tell Us Your Story” Writing Forum

This program is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities

Speakers and topics subject to change.