Scholar to Discuss Immigration

A leading scholar in the field of immigration and nationalism will give a public talk on regulation of immigration in various countries and will meet with Knox College students and faculty in a two-day residency at Knox on April 22-23, sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa.

John A. Agnew, Distinguished Professor of Geography at University of California, Los Angeles, will speak on "Citizenship and Nationality: How Immigration Rules Relate to Different Conceptions of Nationality around the World" at 7 p.m., Monday, April 22, in the Muelder Reading Room, Seymour Library.

While at Knox, Agnew also will meet with students in environmental studies, integrated international studies, and political science. In one of the classes he and the students will discuss the history of cartography and examine selected items in Knox's collection of rare maps.

Agnew, a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, is an expert in political geography, international political economy, and European urbanization, with a special emphasis on Italy. His publications include the books "Globalization and Sovereignty," "Berlusconi's Italy: Mapping Contemporary Italian Politics," "Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power," "The Geography of the World Economy" and "Making Political Geography." He also has co-edited several reference books, including "Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Human Geography," and "Landscapes, Identities, and Development."

John Agnew is Distinguished Professor of Geography and professor of Italian at UCLA, where he received the 2007 Award in Distinguished Teaching. He taught at Syracuse University for 20 years before going to UCLA in 1996. He is past president of the Association of American Geographers, recipient of the association's Distinguished Scholarship Award, and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He received his bachelor's degree with honors from the University of Exeter, and his master's and Ph.D degrees at Ohio State University.

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar program sponsors visits by leading scholars to schools with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's premiere academic honor society. Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture open to the entire community. Since the program was established in 1956, it has sponsored more than 4,000 residencies. Knox's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was chartered in 1916, the fourth-oldest in the state and the first at an undergraduate liberal arts college in Illinois. Out of more than 3,000 colleges and universities in the U.S., fewer than 300 have chapters of Phi Beta Kappa.