The US magazine publisher Henry Luce famously declared in 1941 that ‘the 20th Century must be to a significant degree an American Century’ (‘The American Century,’ Diplomatic History, vol. 23, no. 2, Spring 1941, p. 168). Will the twenty-first century, similarly, be ‘an American Century’? Why – or why not?
‘I don’t see any American dream,’ declared the African American activist and theorist Malcolm X in his speech, ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ (1964): ‘I see an American nightmare’ (Malcolm X Speaks, edited by George Breitman, Grove Press, 1965, p. 26). As you contemplate the United States now, do you see ‘dream’ or ‘nightmare’?
‘There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’ (Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken Books, 2007 [1968], p. 256). Explore Benjamin’s provocative formulation with specific reference to American culture.
The clash of differing viewpoints in the United States on issues ranging from abortion to immigration, and gun control to English-speaking, gives American cultural studies lots of material to work with. But why are the ‘culture wars’ fought so fiercely in contemporary America?
American studies often expresses itself in negative or critical mode: e.g. William V. Spanos notes how it aims to bring into visibility such neglected constituencies as ‘native Americans, blacks, women, gays, ethnic minorities,’ etc. (‘American Studies in the “Age of the World Picture”’, The Futures of American Studies, edited by Donald E. Pease and Robyn Wiegman, Duke UP, 2002, p. 388). Notwithstanding this, however, is American studies still secretly in love with the United States?
‘Just as the 1960s let it all hang out, so we let our disciplines overflow into each other like anarchic lava lamps’ (Thomas Docherty, ‘Our Cowed Leaders Must Stand Up for Academic Freedom’, Times Higher Education, 9 April, 2009). Are there perils in the interdisciplinarity that American studies has at its core? If so, what are they?
Study Activities
American studies, as we briefly sketch in the chapter, emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and consolidated itself during the 1950s and 1960s as an academic field with core areas of inquiry, distinct intellectual protocols and a specialist professional infrastructure. But of course the culture of the United States had been studied long before this moment of disciplinary consolidation. Draw up a list of ten important contributions made in the earlier era to the study of American culture (you might look for texts in literary studies, say, or in art criticism, or in musicology, or in popular culture studies, etc.). Despite these texts pre-dating American studies’ formalisation, do they still have interesting things to tell us? Why might they still matter?
Often, while practising a particular academic discipline, we do not pause to consider its history. However, to counter any sense that we are alone or untethered, it can be helpful to situate ourselves in a longer lineage. In this spirit, carry out your own archaeological project with respect to American studies. Take one of the following books, published between 1950 and 1965, that have taken on the status of foundational texts in our discipline: a) Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950); b) R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (1955); c) Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964); d) Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge (1965). What would you say about the operating assumptions and the critical practices of your chosen text? In what ways is the text still of value; in what ways, problematical?
As we discuss in the chapter, American studies has defined itself from its beginnings as distinctively interdisciplinary in its research methods. On any given topic, materials of varying kinds might be brought together productively, thereby extending and deepening the analytical field (and countering any residual snobbery that only certain materials are worthy of academic attention). Conduct your own interdisciplinary project by assembling and analysing diverse texts and images that relate to one of the following events in recent American history: a) the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020; b) the storming of the United States Capitol in January 2021 by Donald Trump’s supporters; c) the destructive wildfires in and around Los Angeles in January 2025. Range widely in your search for materials. What would you say is gained by such an eclectic and expansive approach to study?
‘What images of social life shall be projected and which shall be marginalized? What voices shall be heard and which be silenced?’ (Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon, Cultural Politics, Blackwell, 1995, p. 4). Discuss in groups whose voices you feel it is especially important for American cultural studies to hear.
One of the key concepts in American studies broached in the chapter (and returned to in detail in Chapter 10) is that of transnationality: i.e. the notion that any American cultural object should not be understood as contained within the boundaries of the United States, but, rather, be seen as constituted by and immersed in a series of cross-border dynamics. For example, Herman Melville’s great novel Moby-Dick (1851)is suffused by references to European history, literature, religion, etc.; the novel features a cosmopolitan cast of characters and its plot ventures far from the US to follow a transoceanic itinerary. Melville himself was partly of Dutch parentage. And so on … In similar vein, take the nearest American cultural object to you and, rather than positioning it securely within a national frame, aim to see it transnationally (the varied ways in which it is globally implicated). Your chosen example might be a literary text, or film, or TV show, or song; equally, however, it might be an item of clothing, a piece of digital technology, something to eat, etc.
Online Resources
American Studies Association – the U.S. hub of American studies, founded in 1951 and supporting ‘the development and dissemination of interdisciplinary research on U.S. culture and history in a global context’
British Association for American Studies – homepage of the association founded in 1955 ‘to promote, support and encourage the study of the United States in the Universities, Colleges and Schools of the United Kingdom, and by independent scholars’
Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association – evidencing the global distribution of our discipline, the homepage of ‘the leading scholarly association devoted to American studies in Australasia’ (founded in Melbourne in 1964)
Library of Congress – website of the largest library in the world, with many of its colossal holdings in American history and culture accessible online
Making of America – rich collection of primary sources maintained by the University of Michigan Library, with especially strong holdings in the antebellum and Reconstruction eras
National Archives – website of ‘the nation’s record keeper’, housing official American documents and images from the founding of the United States to today
American Literature – diligently maintained by Donna M. Campbell of Washington State University and including, among other things, collections of primary texts by US writers ranging alphabetically from the frontier story writer James Lee Allen to the Dakota Sioux memoirist Zitkála-Šá
Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture – the journal was founded in 1900, but this site hosts the (open-access) e-editions published since 2002: lively and diverse pieces on US literature, film, TV, music, etc.
Cultural Politics – wonderful resource, both helpful and stimulating, echoing our own perspective on the central importance of cultural study: ‘subsites’ are devoted to popular culture, digital cultures, social movements & culture, environmental justice cultural studies, and interdisciplinary cultural study
Interdisciplinarity – excellent overview by Paula Raento of the intellectual and professional opportunities opened up by interdisciplinary study (a practice fundamental to American studies) – see also ‘Cultural Politics’ above
Cultural Studies – portal to colossal array of materials relating to thinkers in multiple fields, including Black cultural studies, border studies, cyberculture studies, theories of the body, etc.: wildly eclectic, even indiscriminate, in its contents, but containing much of value
Key Theories of Mikhail Bakhtin – comprehensive introduction by Nasrullah Mambrol to the work of this major Russian theorist, whose ideas of dialogism and heteroglossia we consider in the chapter for their productivity within American cultural studies