39 American Studies Course Programs

Temple Pre-LL.M. Academy: U.S. Legal Foundations is a dynamic two-week program designed for international law students or recent graduates seeking a strong foundation in American legal education and culture. Hosted by Temple University Beasley School of Law and The Center for American Language and Culture at Temple University.

IEP offers an online eight-week Intensive English Program six times a year in exciting Los Angeles for ESL students with academic or professional goals, including passing the TOEFL for entrance into an American university. The 21-26 hours per week IEP offers a coordinated program of conversation, grammar, writing, reading/vocabulary, pronunciation and listening. Students from all over the world enroll in this multi-level program and can continue to improve their skills by advancing from session to session. Qualified students from outside the U.S. are eligible for a student visa. Individual courses may also be taken by part-time students.

As an American studies concentrator, you take a holistic, interdisciplinary look at American culture, both in the United States and globally, examining race/racism, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, and political culture in a historical, intellectual, and social context. In addition to required courses and a capstone paper or project, you can choose from an extensive course list in the humanities and social studies. Science courses related to American studies are also a welcome part of your program. American studies can equip you for graduate work and careers in law, library work, museology, research, teaching, politics, journalism, publishing, and more.

The American Studies minor explores the values of the peoples of the United States and the Americas through cultural expressions—their history, art, folklore, politics, social mores, and literatures.In American Studies, we emphasize an interdisciplinary perspective: drawing on traditions of thought and action from the humanities and social sciences and exploring diverse peoples, theories, methods, materials, texts, and resources.

An interdisciplinary undergraduate major that seeks to convey a broad understanding of American culture and society in all their complexity. The Program in American Studies is an interdisciplinary undergraduate major for independent thinkers. The major provides students with a multifaceted understanding of the United States in all its complexity and diversity. Rooted in courses in history and social sciences, literature and the arts, and race and ethnicity, it invites students to develop fresh, insightful interpretations of America’s past and present, while also preparing them for the future as deft critical thinkers and creative problem-solvers.

The Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies of the Claremont Colleges (IDAAS) offers a rigorous, multidisciplinary major that emphasizes social justice, critical thinking, and innovative analysis of the history, society, and cultural production of Asians in the United States, within both multiracial American and transnational contexts. The curriculum provides students with a comprehensive grounding in a range of thematic, theoretical, and methodological approaches within Asian American Studies. The major integrates theory and practice through community work, and sustained and focused inquiry in the senior project or thesis. In consultation with an IDAAS adviser, students take core interdisciplinary courses in Asian American Studies and select appropriate courses in a range of disciplines throughout the five colleges.

The Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies at The Claremont Colleges (IDAAS) offers a rigorous, multidisciplinary major that emphasizes social justice, critical thinking, and innovative analysis of the history, society, and cultural production of Asians in the United States, within both multiracial American and transnational contexts. The curriculum provides students with a comprehensive grounding in a range of thematic, theoretical, and methodological approaches within Asian American studies. The major integrates theory and practice through community work and sustained and focused inquiry in the senior thesis. In consultation with an IDAAS adviser, students take core interdisciplinary courses in Asian American studies and select appropriate courses in a range of disciplines throughout the five colleges. The program seeks to prepare students for various careers in the community, private or public, along with graduate work.

The Department of American Studies is designed to teach students how to engage in the critical and interdisciplinary study of race, gender, class, sexuality, Indigeneity, political economy, imperialism and social movements in contemporary, historical, hemispheric and transnational contexts. After an introductory course entitled “What Is American Studies?,” students take an intensive junior colloquium focusing on theories and methods of American Studies.

Sponsored by the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges, American Studies is an interdisciplinary major that encourages students to think critically and creatively about culture, society, and politics in the United States. The American Studies Program is coordinated by an intercollegiate faculty whose aim is to introduce students to the complexity of the American experience. Majors take courses in a variety of disciplines such as literature, history, ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, music, media studies, and the visual arts. In addition, majors take multidisciplinary courses that use materials from different disciplines to explore particular issues in American life. The interdisciplinary approach to this major affords the student opportunities for graduate study and a variety of career choices, including education, law, library science, journalism, business, and museum work.

The Carleton American Studies program looks at American culture through the lens of many disciplines. This includes the institutions, values, and beliefs that have shaped the experiences of U.S. residents. Core courses provide an introduction to the scholarly work in the field. Other courses draw from art history and religion to history, economics, and political science.

American Studies is a multidisciplinary major and minor that encourages you to think critically and creatively about the complexity and diversity of the United States from local, national and transnational perspectives. Your studies will be both broad and deep. Multidisciplinary core courses like Introduction to American Cultures and American Studies Seminar provide the background and methodologies to help you explore issues relevant to the U.S. Then, with courses in fields such as literature, history, sociology, anthropology, politics, religion and the arts, you’ll discover a breadth of subjects you can incorporate in your senior thesis.

Sponsored by the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges, American Studies is a multidisciplinary major that encourages students to think critically and creatively about culture in the United States. The American Studies Program is coordinated by an intercollegiate faculty whose aim is to introduce students to the complexity of the American experience. Majors take courses in a variety of disciplines such as literature, history, ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, music, and the visual arts. In addition, majors take multidisciplinary courses that use materials from different disciplines to explore a particular issue in American life. The interdisciplinary approach to this major affords the student many career choices. Some follow graduate study; other paths include the professions of law, library science, journalism, business and museum curatorship.

American studies is an innovative field of study that looks at the American past and present through an interdisciplinary lens. Students in the major draw upon concepts and methods developed in history, literature, sociology, philosophy, political science, anthropology, art history and music in their analyses of various American social, cultural and political phenomena.

Students of American studies examine the personal side of American life, considering the role of music, art, memory, family and popular culture throughout history. Courses explore African American history, the history of jazz, baseball, and American culture, the history of the South, American modernist literature, and museums and memory, among many other topics. Students begin their inquiry with an examination of an artifact — a song, a work of art or a film — and use that as a jumping-off point to explore widening circles of culture.

Wesleyan’s interdisciplinary Department of American Studies provides a broad grounding in the study of the United States in a hemispheric and global context. American Studies majors draw on the intellectual resources of a variety of disciplines—Anthropology, Art History, English, History, Religion, and Sociology, as well as interdisciplinary programs such as Latin American Studies, African American Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.