Undergraduate Program

What is American Studies about?

The Department of American Studies at The University of Texas-Austin is an interdisciplinary field concerned primarily with the historical study of the cultures of the United States and with analysis of their contemporary status. Emerging nationally toward the end of the Great Depression and immediately following the Second World War, American Studies initially focused on defining such concepts as national identity and national character, and exploring such dominant archetypes or myths as the frontier, the American dream, and rugged individualismÜconcepts that proved culturally useful as Americans strived for self-understanding. Over the years, the field has expanded beyond this initial focus, and beyond a dependence on the disciplines of history and English, to include such disciplines as philosophy, art, cultural geography, oral history, sociology, architecture, and material artifacts. As a field of inquiry, American Studies now focuses increasingly on multicultural issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. The University's fulltime American Studies faculty of ten members (there are also two adjuncts) exhibit considerable breadth, including social and cultural historians, a cultural geographer, two art historians, a historian of social science, another of religion, a scholar of youth culture, a historian of music; experts on African American, Asian American, and Mexican American cultures; and on law, literature, photography, popular culture, design, and technology.