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Introduction to American Studies

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Product Details
Author(s): Ray Pence
ISBN: 9781684787029
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2025
Available Formats
Format: GRLContent (online access)

$75.00

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Overview of
Introduction to American Studies

Discovery

Working with you, we’ll encounter culture through American Studies. There are many ways to do this. Our approach asks you to join us as we embark on a learning journey consisting of four parts. These are the course modules:

 

First, we’ll introduce you to American Studies. It’s an academic field that got started in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. Still, many people aren’t aware of what American Studies is all about. American Studies is an academic field of research and an academic movement for change. Both sides are devoted to investigating and understanding culture and America.

 

This may sound simple, but it’s complex. We aim to bring pleasure to the opportunity of discovering (and, in many cases, rediscovering) culture and America.

 

Above all, the quest should be useful to you, now and in the future. Most of you aren’t American Studies majors. This fact means that we, your instructors, are obligated to help you realize why the course is valuable. We’ll help you put the information into action. Critical thought, discussion, and writing are the three main modes of using what’s available here.

Table of Contents

Module 1: Culture, America, American Studies

  • Week 1: Culture and America: Familiar Territory, New Conceptual Tools
    • “Culture as Iceberg”
    • “The Idea of America” by Priscilla Wald
    • “What Is American Studies?” by George Lipsitz
  • Week 2: Surveying the Territory: The American Studies Field
    • “American Studies” by Ann Fabian
    • “American Exceptionalism: Anthropology of an Idea” by Uri Friedman
    • American Culture: Social Media Post on X by Vivek Ramaswamy
    • “Tell ‘Em Where You’re From: Regional Anthems” by Various Authors
  • Week 3
    • “Folk Musical Traditions” by Ray Allen
    • “Beyonce is America: Give Her the Grammy” by Michael Patrick F. Smith
    • “Blue Roots” by William R. Ferris
  • Week 4
    • “Soulsville, USA: The Saga of Stax Records” by Mark Crosby
    • “Rhythm and Blues: Tell It Like It Is” By Mark Puryear

 

 

Module 2: Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation, and Reconstruction

  • Week 5
    • “How Racism Relies on Arbitrary Hierarchies: From 15th-Century West Africa to Suburban Long Island“ by Ibram X. Kendi
    • “Before the Mayflower” by Lerone Bennett, Jr.
  • Week 6
    • “Historical Foundations of Race” by Various Authors
    • “Statement on Race and Racism” by Rebecca Ackermann, Sheela Athreya, Deborah Bolnick, Agustín Fuentes, Tina Lasisi, Sang-Hee Lee, Shay-Akil McLean, and Robin Nelson
    • “Bacon’s Rebellion: Primary and Secondary Sources” By Various Authors
    • “Religion and Enslavement” by Kimberly Sambol-Tosco, Fountain Hughes, & Harriet Smith
  • Week 7
    • “What to the Slave is the 4th of July” by Frederick Douglass
    • “Black Women, Agency, and the Civil War,” by Karen Cook Bell
    • Poetry by Frances E. W. Harper & New York Times Obituary for Harper
  • Week 8
    • “Reconstruction” by Ella Forbes
    • “Reconstruction in Mississippi” by Jason Phillips
    • “The Black Worker” by W.E.B. DuBois

 

 

Module 3: Remembering Indigenous Nations, Mexico, and Manifest Destiny

  • Week 9
    • “Indian: Keyword Essay” by Robert Warrior
    • Poets and Lives: Joy Harjo, Simon J. Ortiz, Luci Tapahonso
    • Website: “The Trail of Tears: A Story of Cherokee Removal” National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution
    • “Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal,” By Smithsonian American Art Museum Staff
    • “Significance of the Frontier in American History” by Frederick J. Turner
  • Week 10
    • “Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears Primary Sources,” Various Authors
    • “Trails of Tears: What We Don’t Know about Indian Removal” by Jeffrey Ostler
    • “National Trail of Tears Association”: Website
  • Week 11
    • “Milestones in the History of U.S.–Foreign Relations”: US State Department Website Document
    • “The Homeland, Aztlán” by Gloria Anzaldúa
    • Collection of Primary Sources on the US–Mexican War; Authors: John O’Sullivan, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Antonio López de Santa Anna
  • Week 12
    • “The U.S.–Mexican War: Forgotten Foes” by Brian DeLay
    • “The Mexican Viewpoint on the War with the United States” by Jesús Velasco Márquez
    • “Heroes or Traitors? Writing the Story of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion” by Reyna Grande

 

 

Module 4: Social Movements and Some of Their Stories

  • Chicana/o Communities and Social Movement Activism
  • The United States in Vietnam: The First “Forever War” and American Culture
  • Indigenous Nations and Social Movements
  • People With Disabilities in America: Working for Rights, Building Culture
  • Bayard Rustin, “Angelic Troublemaker” and “Brother Outsider”