What is American Studies?
American Studies: The Discipline
The discipline of American Studies begins with the recognition that as a nation of immigrants and of conquered peoples, the United States has always encompassed diverse racial and ethnic groups in encounter and conflict. It has evolved as a society engaged in endless change, owing to transformations wrought by geographical expansion, democracy, industrialization, urbanization, modernization, and the pressures of war and international politics. In the midst of these large movements of history, Americans have forged distinctive cultures which express their basic values and give meaning to their institutions and everyday social practices. Such cultures reflect, in part, the different experiences of diverse Americans according to their race, ethnicity, gender, and class. They also attest to American participation in a larger ideological and philosophical heritage shaped by the ideals of democracy and equality that have been affirmed in major political movements and articulated in art, literature, music, films, journalism, and other cultural and intellectual forms.
Since its inception in the late 1930s, the field of American Studies has aimed to foster new understandings of America and its multiple peoples and cultures in a rapidly changing world. Its focus on the historical and intellectual underpinnings of the cultures, societies, and politics of America have continually returned to one central question: What does it mean to be an American? As the answers to this question have changed in response to demographic, economic, and political transformations, the discipline of American Studies has continually re-examined its methods and central questions. Shifting from an earlier emphasis on the supposed uniqueness, or exceptionalism, of the United States, American Studies has been for the past several decades the academic discipline most creatively and rigorously engaged in analyzing the complex and multi-layered expressions of American pluralism and diversity.
