American Studies

What is "America?" Qué es "América?" Is it a country, a region, a continent, the New World? Is it a state of mind, a set of loyalties, perhaps a way of belonging to a national community? Who defines its meanings and in what contexts?

The American Studies Program at Mount Holyoke provides students with the skills and flexibility to work across disciplines and borders to formulate and address the many crucial questions about what America is and has been for its many peoples. Just as important, American studies asks students to discover what it means today, in an ever-changing world, to be an American.

The program's award-winning faculty are drawn from throughout the College and teach a wide range of subjects, from art history to literature, history to politics, anthropology to film. The curriculum is one of the most interdisciplinary at Mount Holyoke and, in its breadth of courses and opportunities for intensive individual study, represents the finest aspects of a liberal arts education. Its goal is to challenge students to explore, confront, and help reshape the many understandings, experiences, and expressions that have made, and continue to make, America.

Meet the Department

In 2002, Mary Renda won the prestigious Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize for Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940.

How can we understand the media's evolution in the twentieth century? Daniel Czitrom wrote the book.

Political propaganda in the 1790s? Paul Staiti knows how it worked.

Interested in women’s writing during the American Civil War or the role of Frankenstein?—that’s right, the monster—in America’s complex racial history? These are some of Elizabeth Young’s areas of interest.

Why did the Shakers shake? Ask Jane Crosthwaite.

How have modern Jewish writers and makers of popular culture responded to the challenge of adjusting to America? Donald Weber knows.

Where’s Christopher Benfey? In Slate, the New York Times Sunday Book Review, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement.

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