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American studies helps you develop a broad familiarity with the dynamics of cultural experience and explore aspects of life in the United States, such as popular culture, fine arts, institutions, values, gender and ethnic relations, artifacts, and the everyday life of a diverse country.
Why
Take American Studies at Iowa?
The American studies department’s faculty members are known for their highly individualized assistance in developing a plan of study to reflect a student’s personal interests. The department’s small number of majors, currently about 35, allows for more personalized attention.
If you’d like to pursue a curriculum drawn from a variety of fields having to do with America’s history, culture, politics, and communications, American studies is a field to investigate at Iowa. For example, you could use an American studies major as a way to study ethnic and racial diversity, the arts, and history. If your interests lean more toward a combination of anthropology, sociology, film, and women’s studies, the interdisciplinary nature of American studies would provide the means to connect them.
Students
Students who choose this major are highly motivated and intellectually curious. Their career goals are as varied as the course material. Students select American studies because they are interested in the varied topics of courses they can take and the ability to choose courses across disciplinary lines.
Course
Work
A distinctive feature of the American studies major is the opportunity it provides to develop both broad training in cultural analysis and emphasis of particular interests within the study of American culture. By your second term in the major, you should have selected:
- Six courses in American studies.
- Two courses in American history.
- Four courses in a focus area.
Two courses are required for majors: Sources in American Studies and the junior/senior Seminar in American Cultural Studies.
With the help of dedicated and readily available faculty advisors, you may elect to pursue one of three focus areas within American studies or to create an individualized focus. Each focus area allows you to group courses in American studies and other departments around a specific interdisciplinary theme, topic, or set of social issues.
Ethnic Studies, Diversity, and Differences
In this focus area, students consider how social differences along the lines of gender, race, sexuality, social class, region, national origin, and age shape institutions and cultural practices in the United States. Emphasis is on the historic emergence of categories of social difference and their interactions, especially as revealed in cultural practices and artifacts, geography and cityscapes, leisure, and popular expression.
American Arts, Literature, and Popular Culture
In this focus area, students examine artistic creations to discover how they are shaped by cultural preconceptions, norms, and standards, and how, in turn, these expressive forms affect ongoing developments in cultural life. This concentration emphasizes skills in the formal analysis of artistic artifacts, historical inquiry, and cultural contextualization.
American Society, Politics, and Everyday Life
In this focus area, students look at the dynamics of social change, the emergence and fate of political movements, and the forms and practice of everyday life in America. The area encompasses the tradition of revolution in America, the effects of technological and economic change, and the roles of the family, workplace, and community from the colonial era to the digital age.
Individual Focus
Alternatively, you may design your own interdisciplinary focus area in consultation with your American studies advisor. An individually designed focus area may concentrate on an interdisciplinary topic, theme, group of people, or time period.
Honors
Students with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.33 or higher may, under the guidance of the undergraduate honors advisor, complete a research project. Project proposals ideally are made by the end of your junior year. Results of the project are presented in a senior essay to a committee of three faculty members. Your committee may choose to hear an oral defense of the final project, usually in the 12th week of your last semester.
Internships
Undergraduates have proceeded into master’s degree or PhD programs and taken internships with a number of local agencies, including the State Historical Society of Iowa, the Division of Historic Preservation, the University of Iowa Museum of Art, the Iowa Humanities Board, Living History Farms, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, and the Putnam Museum. Other internships in social agencies, government, or business also may be arranged.
Careers
Although there is no explicit vocational training in American studies, the program prepares students for careers in business, education, government, arts and museum administration, journalism, and social services.
It’s also a good foundation for advanced studies in the humanities, the social sciences, theology, business, or for professional studies in law or medicine. The department also features master’s and doctoral programs.
Recent graduates in American studies have entered law and medical schools, gone on to graduate study in a variety of fields, and secured jobs in corporations, social welfare agencies, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions.
Scholarships
Refer to the Office of Student Financial Aid for a complete list of available
scholarships.
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