This course investigates race/class and gender implications of the media generated immigration discourse in Europe, and Italy in particular, as a whole. That is, how individuals in Europe perceive immigration and distinguish among different movements of people. The course analyzes how what people perceive is generated and communicated, and in what way meaning is attributed and reacted with counter-narratives to that which is perceived. From the past to the present, through colonial and modern times to post WWII massive intra-European migrations, images and symbols of immigration remain political. How and why do they become so? Does theorizing the visual require a “grammar” of its own? How do images limit and enable securitization? How do figurations and discourses relate to and shape one another? Drawing upon examples from the last century as well as current media related discourses of asylum and migration in Europe at the continental, national and urban level, students participate in a group project that attempts to connect media politics to the concept of “community” in Rome. To this end, students’ analytical focal point is placed upon the city and suburbs of Rome where the presence of diverse immigrant communities offers opportunity for first-hand exploration of how effectively they and their second-generation individuals have been challenging the Italian political, economic, cultural mainstream and ultimately the same idea of citizenship from within the city. Students therefore experience first-hand how the Eternal city has changed in the past thirty years and how it is still changing beyond tourist stereotypes through a continual process of immigration and alteration.