ENGL 556 Cultural Studies

This course will offer an overview of the field of American Studies from its founding (during the Cold War) to the current period. American Studies is an interdisciplinary field that studies the paradigmatic narratives that shape our received understandings of the American past and present. American Studies considers contexts such as settler colonialism, slavery, labor, capitalism, immigration and war, all of which have influenced the ideas, history, culture and society of the United States. The seminar will pay particular attention to innovations in American Studies produced since the turn of this century that reconceive both the parameters and meaning of this “Area study.”