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Academics

The Major

In the American Studies program, we apply interdisciplinary frameworks to the study of institutions and cultural production—including music, art, literature, film, and digital media—as well as social formations, relations, and practices. By examining the long histories of colonialism, racism, capitalism, and more, we strive to understand how such systems of power have shaped our embodied individual and collective experiences in shared and divergent ways.

Why Study American Studies?

The American Studies Program at Williams College is anchored by an interdisciplinary study of the cultures and social formations that are considered distinctly American, as well as places, peoples, and events around the world that are shaped by the U.S. Through classes, advising, and mentorship, you will be encouraged to pursue your passions and curiosities in the field while preparing for a range of professions, including journalism, teaching, urban planning, writing, and law.

Major Requirements

As an American Studies major, you will learn about history, literature, social sciences, art, performance, and other forms of expression, while exploring the lived experiences of diverse people and groups. These historical trajectories inform our engagement with a range of contemporary actors, struggles, and practices, from prison abolitionists to Indigenous water protectors, from journalism to experimental performance, and from transnational labor organizing to youth activism, both local and global.

Our accomplished faculty bring a wide range of methodological tools to the historical knowledge, social analysis, and political thought they share in their classes, and courses often feature work by BIPOC artists, activists, and academics.

Required Courses

Ten courses are required for the major, including three core courses and seven electives.

Core Courses

AMST 101: The Nation and Its Discontents
AMST 301: Theories and Methods in American Studies (Junior Seminar)
One 400-level course designated as a Senior Seminar

Electives
Your seven elective courses must be split across the four specialization areas listed below. You can either choose five in your chosen specialization and one in two other specializations (“5-1-1”), or four in your specialization and one in all three remaining specializations (“4-1-1-1”).

In either model, at least one of your elective courses should also be a pre-1900 course. A pre-1900 course will have a significant amount of material dedicated to events, topics, ideas, etc. prior to the 20th century.

This specialization is for students interested in American arts, literature and media.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, you will examine cultural artifacts with attention to aesthetic form and to the contexts—historical, social and political—that determine and situate those forms. You will explore how history has shaped the arts and media, and how the arts and media have shaped how we think and who we are. You will take courses across a range of genres and media, including poetry, fiction, music, film and video, pop culture, visual culture, performance, experimental and activist art.
This interdisciplinary specialization examines the role of race, ethnicity and diasporic movements in the construction of American identities.

You will explore how experiences and concepts of race and ethnicity are transformed through the processes of diaspora and immigration. Courses may encompass a broad spectrum of fields such as history, literature, religion, politics, anthropology, gender studies, media and the performing arts, among others. You will be required to take a combination of courses that allow you to comparatively assess the experiences of at least two ethno-racial groups in the Americas.
Critical and cultural theory is for students who want to combine philosophy, aesthetics, and social thought in a methodological, conceptual, and problem-driven approach.

Choose from a wide range of course topics, including feminist theory, anti-imperial and postcolonial theory, literary theory, critical race theory, queer theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and other counter-traditions in political theory and philosophy.
This specialization focuses on the human landscape and the built environment.

Courses undertake the reading of geographical regions, patterns of habitation, imagined spaces, property relations and/or artifacts.

Study Away

We encourage students to pursue cross-cultural comparative studies. A major in American Studies can be combined with study away from Williams for a semester or a year if plans are made carefully. Many courses that are approved for college credit may also count toward the American Studies major. Many of the courses offered by the Williams Mystic program also count toward the major. The program accepts up to two courses for AMST credit toward the major. Please see the chair if you have questions about how your study abroad may enhance your American Studies experience.

If you plan to study away during your junior year, you should take American Studies 101 before leaving. You are also strongly encouraged to take the Junior Seminar before studying away. You should consult with the chair or your advisor as early as possible about your plans for fulfilling the requirements of the major.

Explore Study Away

American Studies and Other Programs

Students majoring in American Studies are encouraged to consider pursuing concentrations in related fields, such as Africana Studies, Environmental Studies, Latina/o Studies, Performance Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Many of the courses counted for those concentrations may also earn credit toward the American Studies major.

Featured Courses

View Course Catalog

America: The Nation and Its Discontents

This course introduces students to the capacious and extraordinarily varied interdisciplinary field of American Studies. First institutionalized in the mid-twentieth century, American Studies once bridged literature and history in an attempt to discover a singular American identity.

The Feminist Poetry Movement

Feminist poetry and feminist politics were so integrated in the 1960s and 1970s in America that critical essays on poets, such as Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, appeared in the same handbook that listed such resources for women as rape crisis centers and health clinics.

Data for Justice

This course is a unique and inclusive introduction to data science where quantitative thinking, programming, and social justice intertwine. We will build our data science skills using R, a popular open-source data science tool.

Honors and Independent Study

Degree with Honors

Candidates for honors in American Studies undertake a substantial, year-long independent project during your senior year (a senior thesis). To apply, you should have a consistent record of high achievement in courses taken for the major and, typically, you will have done work in the field of study of your proposed thesis.

If you would like to write or produce an honors project, you should consult with both the program chair and your prospective faculty advisor in the fall or winter of your junior year. You must submit a brief proposal describing your project to the chair by spring registration of your junior year. Final admission to the honors thesis program will depend on the advisory committee’s assessment of your qualifications, the merits and feasibility of your project, and the availability of relevant faculty advisors. If the thesis proposal is approved, you will enroll in AMST 491/Winter Study/AMST 492 which, taken together, counts as one of your required electives.

Independent Study

Independent study courses are an option for students who want to pursue a topic independently (or with a peer), but who do not necessarily want, or are not eligible to pursue, a year-long senior thesis. If you are interested in an independent study, please reach out to the faculty member who you would like to advise you or the chair of the program, at least one semester in advance. Please note that independent study is contingent on the availability of faculty to work with students in this special capacity.

Learning Objectives

Students majoring in American Studies will:

Develop knowledge of the histories and cultures of the United States, while engaging the U.S. as a political, social, and cultural formation that has always existed in a context of empire and global capitalism.
Work with and analyze a wide range of evidence and materials—e.g. essays, novels, autobiographies, poems, photographs, films, music, visual art, architecture, urban plans, historical documents and legal texts—developing not only skills with each but also an ability to discuss them together.
Gain competence in a broad range of theories and methods appropriate to interdisciplinary work in American Studies and in all of the major’s specializations.
Learn how to conduct sustained, independent research in American Studies.
Learn how to communicate effectively about the histories, cultures, politics, and social formations of the U.S. in both written and oral forms.
Attain the skills and knowledge that prepare them well both to pursue graduate work in American Studies, related fields, and the professions, and throughout their lives, to critically assess and effectively engage institutions, culture, and social structure and practices.

From a fund established by his parents in memory of Kenneth L. Brown, 1947, a cash prize is awarded annually to a senior majoring in American Studies.
In 1951 Williams College received a substantial gift from the Estate of George J. Mead. Mr. Mead expressed in his will an intention “that this gift shall be used to improve the quality of leadership and service in all branches of government, whether Federal, State, or municipal, by encouraging young people of reliability, good sense and high purpose to enter with adequate preparation those fields of politics and constitutional government upon which must rest the future of this nation.”

A portion of this gift constitutes a Scholarship Fund that directly assists promising students with inadequate means who are specializing in political science, history, American Studies, political economy, or economics. The remaining portion, or Special Fund, is primarily intended to finance a summer intern program in government involving selected sophomores and juniors.
From the income of a fund given by the family of William Bradford Turner, 1914, who was killed in action in France in September, 1918, a cash prize is awarded for the best thesis or essay in the field of American history or institutions.