American Studies is an interdisciplinary ?eld that studies the paradigmatic narratives that shape our received understandings of the American past and present. American Studies considers contexts such as settler colonialism, slavery, labor, capitalism, immigration, and war, all of which have in?uenced the ideas, history, culture, and society of the United States. Students examine how political, economic, and social differences inform and are reproduced by institutions and in public areas such as the law, education, work, health, and the environment. Students attend to the intersecting dynamics of race, class, religion, region, gender, and sexuality, and consider how these dynamics are mediated by literature, music, the visual arts, and popular culture.

Sample classes include:

• The Politics of Visibility
• American Fiction 1900-1950
• Antebellum and Civil War America: 1815-1877
• American Women Writers
• Racial Capitalism & Settler Colonialism in the US

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley CC BY 2.0 from Flickr