American Studies 2008-2009
Overview
American Studies is an interdisciplinary field of concentration in the liberal arts relating to the United States as a geographic area and a cultural and political space. Students are encouraged to explore the diverse character of the American experience, shaped as it is by gender, race, class, geography and ethnicity, and to situate that experience in a context of global economic, cultural and political relations. Students are asked, however, to develop a coherent approach to the study of American culture, politics and society, past and present. To accomplish these tasks, American Studies majors collaborate closely with an advisor to work out a thematic core around which to build a unique and innovative course of study that knits together the methods and perspectives of several disciplines.
Courses Offered
The current Academic Register lists more than seventy courses that can be taken to fulfill the American Studies requirements, and new courses are added regularly. Not all courses are offered every year, but there are more than enough to enable students in the program to select both wisely and well. The largest number of courses are offered by the Departments of English, History, and Political Science. A substantial number of the courses applicable to the major also serve to fulfill the College General Education requirement.
Life after Union
The American Studies major develops essentially the same skills as any other major in the social sciences and the humanities, and therefore opens up similar career paths. Recent graduates of the program have found positions in business, teaching, and government service. They have gone on to law school, and one has recently accepted a fellowship in a Ph.D. program in History.
Faculty
The Interdepartmental Program in American Studies draws its faculty from the Departments of the Arts, Economics, English, History, Modern Languages, Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology. Among the members of those departments who regularly offer courses applicable to that program (with their major teaching areas) are:
VISUAL ARTS
Lorraine Morales Cox
Associate Professor of Art History
Director of American Studies Program
Ph.D., University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
Contemporary Art & Theory
American and Latin American Art
MUSIC
Timothy Olsen
Associate Professor of Music
Ph.D., Yale University
American music
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Clifford Brown, Jr.
Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., Harvard University
American government and politics
Terry S. Weiner
Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., University of North Carolina
Political sociology
Bradley Hays
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., University of Maryland.
U.S. politics; law and courts; constitutional and political development; constitutional theory
SOCIOLOGY
Diedre Hill Butler
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Clark University
African-American historical sociology; social geography; race, class, and gender
David Cotter
Associate Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., University of Maryland
Methods of social research, community, stratification
Melinda Goldner
Associate Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Ohio State University
Medical sociology; race, class, and gender roles; public health; social services
HISTORY:
Andrew Feffer
Associate Professor of History and Director of American Studies
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
American intellectual and cultural history, recent United States history
Andrea Foroughi
Associate Professor of History
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Nineteenth-century American social history, American women’s history
Robert V. Wells
Chauncey H. Winters Professor of History
Ph.D., Princeton University
American colonial history, demography and the family
Kenneth Aslakson
Assistant Professor of History
Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin
African-American, American colonial history, Southern history, legal, race and the Constitution.
Melinda Lawson
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Ph.D., Columbia University
U.S. history in the 19th century, slavery, abolitionism, reform movements, African American.
MODERN LANGUAGES
William Garcia
Associate Professor of Spanish
Ph.D., Rutgers University
Caribbean, Latin American, and Latino-American literature and theater
Victoria J. Martinez
Associate Professor of Spanish
Ph.D., Arizona State University
Latin American, and Latino-American literature
ECONOMICS
J. Douglass Klein
Professor of Economics
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
American economic policies, current and historical
ENGLISH
Brenda Wineapple
Doris Zemurray Stone Professor in Modern Literary and Historical Studies
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
American literature
Jordan Smith
Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Iowa
American poetry
Katherine Lynes
Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., Rutgers University
African-American literature
Bunkong Tuon
Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Massachusetts
20th-Century U.S. ethnic literature, Asian American studies, Southeast Asian American literature and history, and folklore studies.
Among recent books published by this group are Prof. Feffer’s The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism, Prof. Smith’s The Household of Continuance, Prof. Wells’s Facing the “King of Terrors” and Uncle Sam’s Family, and Prof. Wineapple’s Genet, Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein and Hawthorne: A Life.
For more information
Prof. Lorraine Morales Cox, Director American Studies
Union College
Schenectady, N.Y. 12308
(518) 388-6787