BA American Studies

American studies is an interdisciplinary field that is united by both an object of study American culture and a mode of inquiry that moves beyond the scope of any single disciplinary approach. Marked by an interplay between cultural history and the examination of diverse creative forms, social analysis, and critical theory, American studies explores primary sources and asks how they might be understood in the broader contexts of aesthetic traditions, political power, and cultural beliefs. While the American studies curriculum is varied in topic and approach, each student in the major will develop a thematic concentration that gives their studies conceptual coherence. These concentrations are: popular culture, race and ethnicity, artistic and intellectual traditions, space and place, and cultural politics.