Overview
The interdisciplinary American Studies program takes as its subject the cultures that have developed in what is now the United States, understanding "American culture" as the interplay of material practices and the realm of ideas. It considers technology, economy, urbanism, and ecology, as well as literature, the arts, and political and geographic history. American Studies takes a particular interest in cultural hybridity, cultural layering, and American culture exported abroad.
The goal of the Interdisciplinary American Studies program is to utilize the enormous and varied resources of the institution to teach students how to ask and answer scholarly questions; to formulate and undertake a focused interdisciplinary course of study; and to design and execute a substantial integrative research project. In doing this, we build upon several generations of scholars across disciplines who have advocated the critical study of race, class, gender, sexuality, and mass culture, as well as the examination of America as part of an increasingly globalized world.
Undergraduate Program
American Studies: BA, Minor
Faculty and Instructors
* Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.
Faculty
Alexander Benjamin, Lecturer. Technology, representation, landscape, urban renewal, city planning, transportation technologies and photography.
Research Profile
Michael Cohen, Associate Teaching Professor. African American Studies/American Studies.
Research Profile
Sarah Gold McBride, Lecturer. Social and cultural history of the nineteenth-century United States, ordinary life and culture in the 19th century United States with a focus on race, gender, popular culture, material culture, popular science, popular media, and the body. .
Research Profile
Christine Palmer, Associate Director and Lecturer. 20th century mass culture, folklore, race, literature, film, and cultural memory.
Research Profile
Andrew Shanken, Director and Professor. Architecture/American Studies. Architecture Memory, visionary architecture, the unbuilt, paper architecture, heritage conservation, architectural representation, urban representation, diagrams, history of professions, historiography, world's fairs, expositions, California architecture, themed environments.
Research Profile
Affiliated Faculty
Charles L. Briggs, Professor. Anthropology Linguistic and medical anthropology, social theory, modernity, citizenship and the state, race, and violence.
Research Profile
Mark Brilliant, Professor. History/American Studies 20th century US history, with a focus on political economy, civil rights, education, law, and the west.
Research Profile
Raul Coronado, Associate Professor. Ethnic Studies.
Research Profile
Margaret L. Crawford, Professor. Architecture Everyday urbanism, evolution, uses and meanings of urban space and therapid physical and social changes on villages in China’s Pearl River Delta .
* Kathleen Donegan, Associate Professor. English Colonial America, early America, Native America, early Caribbean.
Research Profile
Chimuya Elliot, Associate Professor. African American Studies.
Research Profile
Peter Glazer, Associate Professor. Theater.
Research Profile
Marcial Gonzalez, Associate Professor. English Chicano and Chicana literature, twentieth-century American ethnic literatures, theory of the novel, marxism, critical theory, farm worker social movements.
Dorothy J. Hale, Professor. English English literature, American literature, the novel, narrative theory, critical theory, Henry James, William Faulkner, the modern novel of consciousness.
Research Profile
David Henkin, Professor. History US History, urban history, cultural history, History of Time.
Research Profile
Shari Huhndorf, Professor. Native American Studies Interdisciplinary Native American studies, cultural studies, gender studies, American studies, literary and visual culture.
Research Profile
Richard Hutson, Professor Emeritus. English .
Research Profile
Jake Kosek, Associate Professor. Geography.
Lauren Kroiz, Associate Professor. Art History History and theory of photography and new media, race and ethnic studies, the relationships between regionalism, nationalism and globalism.
Michel Laguerre, Professor. African American Studies Globalization, information technology, urban studies.
Research Profile
Margaretta M. Lovell, Professor. Art History Architecture, design, American art.
Research Profile
Waldo E. Martin, Professor. History African American History, Modern American Culture.
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David H. Miller, Assistant Professor of Practice. Music.
Research Profile
Louise A. Mozingo, Professor. Environmental Design.
Samuel Otter, Professor. English African American literature, 19th century American literature, 17th and 18th century American literature, Herman Melville, race in American culture, literature and history, discourse and ideology, close reading.
Research Profile
Genaro M. Padilla, Professor. English American literature, Chicano/Latino literary and cultural studies, American autobiography.
Research Profile
Beth Piatote, Associate Professor. Native American Studies.
Research Profile
Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor. African American Studies Social movements, visual culture, memory, photography, African American history and culture.
Research Profile
Juana Maria Rodriguez, Professor. Ethnic Studies.
Christine Rosen, Associate Professor. Business History of business and the environment, business history, green chemistry, sustainable business strategies.
Research Profile
Caitlin Rosenthal, Assistant Professor. History. American capitalism, economic history, slavery.
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Alex M. Saragoza, Associate Professor. Ethnic Studies Ideology, modern Mexico, Latin American history, structural origins of Mexican migration, cultural formations in Mexico, Mexican cinema, radio, television.
Research Profile
Scott Andrew Saul, Professor. English African American studies, 20th century American literature and culture, performance studies, jazz studies, histories of the avante-garde.
Research Profile
* Susan Schweik, Professor. English Feminist theory, cultural studies, American poetry, disability studies, 20th-century poetry, literature and politics, war literature.
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Shannon Steen, Associate Professor. Theater Studies.
Bryan Wagner, Associate Professor. English Critical theory, African American literature, historiography.
Research Profile
Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Associate Professor. Chair, Art Practice, English American literature, native American literature, autobiography, ethnic American literature.
Research Profile
Emeritus Faculty
Donald McQuade, Professor Emeritus. English, Advertising, 20th century American literature and culture, theory and practice of non-fiction, literature and popular culture, the American Renaissance, the essay as literature.
Research Profile
Kathleen S. Moran, Lecturer Emerita. Consumerism and American popular culture, 19th and 20th century American political thought.
Research Profile
Contact Information
Faculty Advisor
Michael Cohen, PhD (Department of African American Studies)
241 Evans Hall