The specific task of this paper is to examine your family history using the ideas about: stratification, gender, love, property, history of the family, and families and work. Almost all people living in the U.S. are descended from immigrants who came here from another part of the world. One way to begin your paper is with an immigrant generation from either the maternal or paternal side of your family. Here are some questions to get you started thinking about the paper.

However, do not write your paper as a series of answers to these prompts. Think about these ideas and what you can use from this class to analyze what happened. Where did your predecessors come from? Why did they immigrate? Where did they settle in the U.S.? What kinds of work did they do? What was their economic status? Did they face difficulties due to race, ethnicity, religion or language? What were gender norms and relations like in each generation? Who fit in, who didn’t fit in, and why? Look at generational differences, e.g., great-grandparents, to grandparents, to your parents, to you. That’s an example. It’s not required to have multigenerationsl information about your family. It’s okay if you can’t go back that far, or if you can go even farther. If you know only about your generation and that of your parents, that’s enough. If you have children now, you may also include differences between the ways you grew up and those of your children.