The purpose of this essay is to discuss the field of American Studies as an academic discipline. It will discuss how specific courses fit into a major in this field, and how the fields are related to traditional, more delimited academic fields. The essay will also discuss some basic bibliography for the field.
In the introductory chapter to his anthology on American Studies, Lionel Wyld discusses the nature of American Studies. In his view, it is of the essence of American Studies that the field is interdisciplinary; it was first conceived in that way by its pioneers in the 1930s and 1940s, and would lose its purpose if it were to become merely another academic department with strictly defined borders and interests. He quotes with great approval a statement from a report by John William Ward on the American Studies program that began at Princeton University in February 1942: ôThe theory implicit in any coherent program of study of American civilization is that reality lies in the whole and not in the parts, that the part has meaning only in relation to the whole.ö That American Studies is inherently interdisciplinary, however this premise might be articulated, serves as the unifying principle behind this field.
The emphasis on the term ôcivilizationö in the discussions of American Studies in the 1940s seems to have resulted from the great influence of Arnold ToynbeeÆ A Study of History, the first three volumes of which had appeared in 1934. In his monumental work, Toynbee argues that the logical ôuniverse of discourseö for historical studies is an entire civilization, which is self-contained and can be understood without reference to forces or factors external to it. Wyld quotes Professor Robert E. Spiller, who was a founder of the Program in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania in 1938, as saying that the basic question underlying the field of American Studies is, ôHow can we once more learn ...