American Studies, Past and Present
The Setting for American Studies at SLU

AMERICAN STUDIES, PAST AND PRESENT

Development of the Field
American Studies Today

The Development of the Field
American Studies by any measure is a pathbreaking field. It emerged from the efforts of restless academics to bring the vitality of engaged cultural criticism into concerted scholarly practice. Frustrated by the limitations of disciplines, these scholars developed fertile conversations across disciplinary boundaries. From its inception, this interdisciplinary endeavor we now call American Studies has excelled in framing new and exciting questions, expanding the range of sources for research, and devising cutting-edge methods of scholarship.

The broad contours of the field stretch back to the nineteenth century with the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Ralph Emerson, and John Dewey. In the 1910s and 1920s, critics such as Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Jane Addams, and W.E.B. DuBois energized a generation of American intellectuals around basic questions of identity, culture, and citizenship in a multiethnic society.

American Studies emerged in the 1930s as a movement within the universities, particularly among scholars of American literature and history at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Minnesota. Much of the work of this generation attempted to examine what they took to be the exceptional qualities of American society and culture. The first Ph.D. in American Studies was granted in 1940 to Henry Nash Smith at Harvard.

During the Cold War, universities expanded their scope and mission, and American Studies flourished with new lines of government support. In fact, American Studies at Saint Louis University emerged in this context, organized in 1963 by Prof. Martin Hastings in the Department of History under a National Defense Education Grant.

In the 1960s and 1970s, feminism, African-American and ethnic studies, and post-colonial theory challenged American Studies to incorporate a broader range of voices, and to work for greater inclusion of previously margianalized groups. It was during this period, in 1969 to be precise, that Professor Elizabeth Kolmer established American Studies as a permanent doctoral program at Saint Louis University. In 1971, she launched the Master of Arts in American Studies, followed in 1975 by the undergraduate major. Over the years, many faculty contributed to the program through secondary appointments, creating a cross-disciplinary conversation among Americanists.

As with most humanities fields, American Studies benefited through the 1980s from a deepening of the critical engagements of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and class, along with the growing influence of anthropology, folklore, material culture studies, and visual culture analysis. Throughout the 1990s, American Studies scholars in the United States joined forces with their colleagues abroad to promote the internationalization of the field. Our department has been at the cutting edge of this expanding global dialogue, particularly in its support of the Maastricht Centre for Transatlantic Studies in the Netherlands.

Finally, in 1995, Prof. Kolmer succeeded in transforming American Studies at Saint Louis University into a full-fledged department, with dedicated faculty lines and resources for research and graduate training. Today, faculty in the department are building upon the strong foundation of teaching and mentoring established by Prof. Kolmer, Prof. Lawrence Barman, and Prof. Shirley Loui. This strong foundation has allowed current faculty to develop a range of initiatives in research, teaching, professional and community service.

American Studies Today
At present, students can pursue American Studies coursework in hundreds of universities and colleges around the nation, and in dozens of departments, faculties, and research centers around the world. While only a handful of institutions offer a stand-alone Ph.D. in American Studies, many offer American Studies in combination with a doctorate in another discipline. American Studies enjoys a rich intellectual heritage, and produces some of the most exciting work in the humanities and social sciences.

Students and teachers of American Studies are supported by a lively set of professional tools, including the American Studies Association, the Crossroads Web Site, and the H-Net American Studies discussion group. The Crossroads Site provides a broad range of services, including job listings, grant information, a technology forum, and a syllabus archive. The H-Net discussion groups offer a forum for interdisciplinary conversations and queries around particular fields, topics, or time periods.

The staff of the American Studies Association, based in Washington, DC, provides professional standards and guidelines, curricular and program development support, a speaker's bureau, and tracking information on degrees. The ASA also publishes a useful Bulletin, a Guide to Departments and Programs in American Studies, and a major scholarly journal, The American Quarterly. Finally, the ASA sponsors an annual meeting with thousands of participants attending panels, roundtables, lectures, luncheons, poster sessions, caucus meetings, and off-site events.

The ASA itself is divided further into regional organizations, to which you automatically belong if you join the ASA. Saint Louis University is part of the Mid-American American Studies Association (MAASA), along with Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other universities. Most regional branches hold a stand-alone annual meeting apart from the ASA. In 2001, Saint Louis University hosted the annual meeting of MAASA, and our department publishes the semiannual MAASA Newsletter.

Like all disciplines, American Studies faces many challenges ahead, as scholars work to reshape our understanding of what it means to be American in a global age. But these challenges make for lively and exciting times in the field, and American Studies majors and graduate students at Saint Louis University take an active part in meeting these challenges in the classroom and beyond.