What exactly IS American Studies?

American Studies can be a complicated concept because its scope is so broad, both in terms of method and content. Here’s what some AMS minors have to say about what it means to them:

I would say that American Studies is the critical examination of American society, culture, and power dynamics throughout history. This task involves using textual interpretation, archive curation, genre analysis, contextualization, and generalization to uncover the social, political, and economic implications of everyday, seemingly ordinary aspects of American society and culture. Through deep and critical analysis, American Studies scholars discover how cultural artifacts reflect and shape historical narratives, identities, and ideologies.

Andi Dalton, History: Middle Grades Education, ’26

In signing up for American Studies, I assumed it would just be an intro US history class, going over the course of American history, from Jamestown to present. In beginning this class I quickly realized that was not the case at all, and really we would be using concepts, ideas, formats, among others to better understand and analyze the history of America. … We take moments in American history, and we don’t just talk about the facts, we talk about the chain of events. How is something that happened 300 years ago still prevalent today and why? I never thought the effects of the Civil War were still looming today, but this class has taught me that history stays with us, it doesn’t just become history.

Cassie Dornan, Strategic Communications, ’27

Not confined to simply politics or history or economics, American Studies brings in all avenues of discipline to be able to really chip away about what we know about this nation and the people in it, in a deeper way than we have before. American Studies aims to tackle big themes such as racism, sexism, immigration, identity, and more and apply them to how they manifest within the United States historically, culturally, and legally. … In essence, American Studies challenges the typical idea of a discipline staying in one space. It encourages areas of knowledge to bleed into each other and take up more room. It makes us ask more questions and bring in more sources from vastly different parts of study in order to understand these large concepts more deeply in a holistic way.

Lindsay Bialecki, Psychology & Political Science, ’26