Bachelor of Arts in American Studies
The B.A. in American Studies enables students to look at the experiences of North Americans and their environment from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives.
Courses are grouped into four emphases:
- American systems, which deals with political, economic, religious and legal institutions.
- American cultures, which concentrates on systems of belief and their symbolic expression in literature, art, philosophy, and regional and popular cultures.
- American lives, which explores the ways in which categories of race, ethnicity, class and gender intersect with individual and community experience.
- Writing, which stresses critical writing skills and helps train students to undertake careers in which writing is a major activity.
American Studies offers a flexible, interdisciplinary degree program that allows students to take courses in a number of areas. Students who have interests in American history, society, literature or art, for example, but prefer not to major in a single discipline, such as English or history, are ideal candidates for the program. All students complete a core of American Studies courses that provides them with an overview of American history and society and introduces them to interdisciplinary study.
With an American Studies faculty advisor, each student designs a program of focused course work tailored to the student's interests and career goals. Students may choose to emphasize a particular area in American Studies, for example, or select other courses to develop a program focusing on a particular topic, such as the American West, the 20th century or American multiculturalism.
Students conclude the program with an exit project, developed with an individual faculty member and approved by the faculty advisor. Exit projects may take a variety of forms; they can include internships, theses or some similar kind of creative project. The purpose of the exit project is to help students to integrate the knowledge and skills gained from the program and provide students with a means of exploring career interests before graduation.
