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 What is American Studies?
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What is American Studies?
Investigating the origins, development, and diverse expressions of culture(s) in the United States, the American Studies movement has been a pioneer in innovative liberal-arts education. The first interdisciplinary courses combining American literature and history were offered in the late 1930s and 1940s at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Since then, American Studies has grown to include studies of popular culture, music, art and material culture, women's experience and expression, and the studies of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and region.
Despite this rapid expansion of topics and areas, especially in the last two decades, the central interest for many students, faculty, and programs remains the study of "culture." Understood as systems of value and symbolic expression that shape and give meaning to personal and collective behavior, the culture concept allows for:

holism--exploring the ways cultural forms and beliefs unite and give coherence, and for
diversity--exploring the wide variety of cultural expressions and values within a society.
American Studies at Colorado State is more than an undergraduate concentration. On campus, the program sponsors a faculty reading group and has recently offered a lecture series. American Studies cooperates with other programs, such as the Center for Applied Studies in American Ethnicity, which share an interest in multicultural and interdisciplinary education. Beyond the campus, the program's faculty are active participants in the Rocky Mountain American Studies Association and the national American Studies Association. American Studies faculty have participated in seminars and institutes for Poudre School District teachers, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Bimson Foundation.
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Description of Program
Like many other American Studies programs, American Studies at Colorado State offers a set of core courses together with a selection of existing courses arranged under four options. Students begin their program by taking AU 200 and AU 201, which introduce major themes in American cultural history presented in an interdisciplinary manner. AU 300 uses American personal narratives to introduce students to the methodology of American Studies. Toward the end of their undergraduate experience, students take AU 492, senior seminar, and AU 499, thesis/project. In the senior seminar, students grapple with the specific interdisciplinary topic of the course. Future seminars will include "The American 1930s" and "American Popular Culture." In the senior thesis or project, students will research and write/present on a topic of their own choice, in consultation with a faculty adviser and the Director of the Program.
In addition to these required courses, American Studies students choose one of four options, which encourages them to focus on a significant theme, such as "American Institutions" or "American Pluralism." This section of the concentration encourages students to pursue an area of interest across several departments, identifying the distinctive methods and materials of differing academic disciplines. Finally, American Studies students must take two courses in the "Pluralism" option if "Pluralism" is not their chosen option; students who choose the "Pluralism" option must take two additional courses in any of the options, with approval of Program director.
The entire American Studies concentration is as follows:

Core Courses
AU 200, AU 201 6 hours
AU 300 3 hours
AU 492 3 hours
AU 499 3 hours
Option Courses 18 hours
Pluralism Requirement 6 hours

At the end of their academic study, students receive a B.A. in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American Studies.
For further information and a checklist of concentration requirements, write or call:

Dr. Bruce A. Ronda
Director, American Studies Program
359 Eddy Hall
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
970-491-3486
bronda@vines.colostate.edu
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Options
In addition to the core required courses, American Studies students elect one of four options. These options focus students' non-American Studies course work around central themes and questions, and help students see the ways different disciplines and departments approach similar issues with varying methods.
The options are:
  1. "American Institutions--Public Values and Public Life"--an exploration of the connections between cultural values and public institutions;
  2. "American Pluralism--Signs of Difference"--an exploration of the different versions of experience and culture occasioned by differences in race, class, gender, and ethnic origin, stressing the variety of "social markers" that shape individual and group identity within American culture over time;
  3. "American Regions: the TransMississippi West"--an exploration of the distinctive geographic, social, and economic issues at work in the region, together with the verbal and visual art inspired by the West;
  4. "American Images: Theory, Expression, Experience"--an exploration of the intellectual and aesthetic versions of American experience and values, stressing the interaction of art and politics.

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Current Course Offerings
 AU 200  "Self and Community in American Culture, 1600-1877"

AU 200 studies the conflicted origins and development of American culture by focusing on five key texts: in 1997 they were: Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Laurel Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Thoreau's Walden, and Thomas Dublin's Women at Work. In 1998, students read Ulrich, Thoreau, and Dublin, together with the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson and Mary Cable's Black Odyssey: The Case of the Slaveship "Amistad". Each text becomes a hub from which discussion and presentation of allied issues radiates outward; in each case, the discussion is led back to the central issues of selfhood and community. This course currently counts toward the fulfillment of Category III in the University Studies Program requirements.
 AU 201, "Self and Community in American Culture, 1877 to present"

AU 201 investigates the development of American culture from Reconstruction to the present by focusing on five key events: the Columbian Exposition of 1892-94, the Armory Art Show of 1913, the Flint Sit-Down Strike in 1936, the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas exchange at Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1991. The course combines presentation, films, slides, and class discussion, and fulfills the "Humanities" requirement in the Arts and Science Common Curriculum.
 AU 300, "American Lives: Methods in American Studies" (cross-listed as E 300)

This course, required of all American Studies majors, explores current American Studies methodologies through readings of selected personal narratives. These have included Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Theresa Jordan, Riding the White Horse Home, and Annie Dillard, An American Childhood. Recently, the course has focused attention on the issue of "cultural mapping," encouraging students to locate themselves in specific cultural frameworks and sets of values. Class projects include constructing a "cultural map" of the Colorado State University campus.
 AU 492, "Senior Seminar: The Battle of the Little Bighorn" (Spring 1998)

The defeat of General George A. Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876 is the core event which has generated a complex set of meanings and texts. In film, theatre, spectacle, novels, and historical monographs, "Custer's Last Stand" has served as a mirror for changing cultural beliefs and practices regarding multiculturalism, historical relativism, and hero-worship. Students in this course have worked on a separate website, which can be accessed at "Senior Seminar: The American 1930s" (Spring 1998).
 AU 492, "Senior Seminar: The 1930s: the American Depression Era" (Spring 1999)

This course explores important political and cultural currents of the 1930s, by examining some of the major literature, film, art, photography, and popular fashions and fads of the era. We will try to understand the Depression decade as a paradoxical time in which people worked together to preserve their country's "way of life," but also struggled in many ways to create a new, better country out of their despair and determination to survive. This central paradox of continuity and change provides a focus for presentation and discussion. Special attention is paid to issues of class, gender, and race, together with the role of the arts and popular culture in creating and reflecting American values and visions.

 AU 499, "Thesis / Project"

Students concentrating in American Studies each prepare a senior thesis or project, working with a faculty adviser of their own choice and with the Director of the Program. Recent theses have included a comparison of Charles Lindbergh and Dennis Rodman as American heroes, a study of American photography and the Civil War, an investigation of the role of eighteenth-century Republicanism in the development of American education, and an account of the history of the controversial land claims surrounding the Taylor ranch in southwest Colorado.
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What Can I Do With American Studies?
** This section is currently under construction. **

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