American Studies

Professors Chapman (Music), Herzig (Gender and Sexuality Studies and American Studies); Associate Professors Beasley (chair), Ellasante (Gender and Sexuality Studies and American Studies), Garrison (Psychology), Plastas (Gender and Sexuality Studies and American Studies), and Shrout (Digital and Computational Studies and History); Visiting Lecturer Petrella

What does it mean to be “an American”? How does our understanding of American culture and our relation to it differ depending on historical context, social position, and the interpretive and ideological perspectives we bring to bear upon it? American Studies pursues these questions using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, using texts, performance, and material culture as points of departure for a wide-ranging exploration of American culture. While it focuses on the United States, American Studies situates the United States in a broader transnational context. In particular, American Studies explores the various ways that institutions, values, and practices shape, maintain, and challenge power relations. American Studies courses are designed to elucidate what has been rendered socially invisible.

Utilizing interdisciplinary studies, the American Studies curriculum explores perceptions and narratives often seen as natural, revealing their social and historical roots.  By critically engaging with scholarship exploring race, gender, sexuality, social class, disability, and other social structures—and reflecting on their own connections to these topics—students examine what it means to belong, hold privilege, or face exclusion. Among current American Studies courses are those that focus on cultural geography and cultural politics, science studies, borderlands, diasporas, film and media, gender, history, literature, music, performance, digital and technology studies, queer theory, and critical race theory.

American Studies is a diverse body of interdisciplinary intellectual inquiry. This allows students to engage and direct their area of specialization in consultation with their program advisor. Below are some optional suggestions for areas of specialization within American Studies:

• Identity and Intersectionality
• Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies
• Performance
• Power and Structure
• Material Culture

More information is available on the American Studies department website.