American Studies as an Academic Discipline

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: "The 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." 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 "civilization" in the discussions of American Studies in the 1940s seems to have resulted from the great influence of Arnold Toynbee' A Study of History, the first three volumes of which had appeared in 1934. In his monumental work, To

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istorical, economic, and other relationships between the United States, Canada, and the Spanish (and Portuguese) speaking countries, since their histories are intertwined. The history of Florida, Texas, or California cannot be understood independently of the history of Mexico. A course on "History of the Vietnam Aware" deals with a situation that may or may not have shaped world history very much, but certainly changed the course of political and social history within the United very profoundly. Courses on the history of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, or the judicial system in general deal with major structural factors in how American civilization functions. A course on "Florida Politics" deals with one of the fifty states that make up the union, and still function in some ways (as they are intended to under the Federal system) as independent territories. Finally, a course on the relationship between Congress and the President deals with one of the most important structural factors that enable the United States to be the kind of country it is. As an example of how American Studies serves to interrelate what might otherwise be disparate fields of knowledge, the relationship between the fields of history and literature can

Category: History - A