American Studies Bachelor Program
Curriculum Overview
Table of Contents
Programme Schedule ................................................................................................................................. 1
Required Courses ....................................................................................................................................... 1
Special Topics ............................................................................................................................................. 4
Minor ........................................................................................................................................................... 5
Capstone Project ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Program Schedule
Courses year 1
Courses year 2
Courses year 3
The Americas I: The American The Americas III: From Exploration Study abroad in the U.S.
Century and Beyond (10 EC) to Early Republic (10 EC)
or additional Minor (30 EC)
The Americas II: New
Frontiers (10 EC)
Mobility, Migration,
Transculturation (10 EC)
Theories of Culture I: Race,
Class and Gender (10 EC)
Theories of Culture II: Media and
Popular Culture (10 EC)
Theories of Culture III:
Consumer Nation (10 EC)
Rhetoric and Composition I
(10 EC)
Rhetoric and Composition II (10 EC) Capstone Project (10 EC)
Minor (10 EC)
Minor (20 EC)
Special Topics I (10 EC)
Special Topics II (10 EC)
Required Courses
The Americas I: The American Century and Beyond
The first half of this course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to cultural, historical, political, social,
and economic developments in the Americas from the 1890s to the 1970s. While our main focus will be on
the United States, we will frequently adopt a comparative, hemispheric perspective due to the U.S.’s
substantial involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean during the first half of the twentieth century.
We will focus in particular on the following themes: the Spanish-American War and the rise of the U.S. as
a global power; expansionism and empire; pan-Americanism and transatlanticism; U.S. diplomatic and
military responses to developments in Latin America and the Caribbean; immigration and demographic
shifts; WWII; the Cold War; Castro and the Cuban Revolution; the Vietnam War; the Civil Rights
Movement.
Course Descriptions as of October 2013
The latter part of this course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to cultural, historical, political, social,
and economic developments in the Americas from the 1970s to the present. While our main focus will be
on the United States, we will frequently adopt a comparative, hemispheric perspective due to the increasing
economic, political, and military integration of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada since the 1990s. We will
focus in particular on the following themes: 9/11 and the war on terror; the war on drugs; party polarization
and the rise of the New Right; family politics in the Americas; environmental concerns; Inter-American
economic relations; the U.S.’s current cross-national and international relations and trade networks;
strategies of world leadership and power.
The Americas II: New Frontiers
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to cultural, historical, political, social, and economic
developments in the Americas during the nineteenth century. While our main focus will be on the United
States, we will study the following themes in a comparative, hemispheric context: the “Age of
Revolutions”; frontiers and frontier societies; changing constructions of masculinity and femininity;
relationships between city and countryside during the “market revolution”; immigration, nativism, and
ethnic and national identities; religious, reform, and suffrage movements; constructions of race and the
experience of slavery; the U.S. Civil War, civil conflicts in Latin America and efforts to create new forms
of state and confederation; the long struggle for emancipation and the turbulent era that followed; relations
between indigenous peoples and settlers, citizens, and states; the creation and development of cultural
institutions; the growth of industrial capitalism and technological innovation; the rise of social, moral, and
political movements in response to industrialization; and linkages between American peoples, states, and
economies and the wider world.
The Americas III: From Exploration to Early Republic
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to cultural, historical, political, social, and economic
developments in the Americas roughly between 1500 and 1800, with our principal focus on the territory
now known as the United States. Our investigations will be cast within an Atlantic framework: that is, they
will consider how the European settlement of the American continent, and the creation of the Early
Republic, was in constant interaction with the economic, dynastic, statist, and cultural developments of
those people who lived in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. We will use this perspective to trace the
settlement of the Americas from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, to the forging of the
United States in the late eighteenth. The course is designed to provide an introduction to early American
political and social history as well as its wider culture, and to provide a framework for synthesizing
knowledge of the Americas within broader world-historical developments.
Mobility, Migration, Transculturation
This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to current forms, practical problems of, as well as
theoretical debates on migration by exploring the social, cultural, psychological, geopolitical, legal, and
economic implications of specific international migration movements in the Americas and, to a lesser
extent, in Europe. The course will concentrate in particular on the following topics: globalization,
international trade agreements, and the geo-politics of borders; current social, economic, political, and
environmental push and pull factors; the migration of elites (brain-drain); developing nations and the
Western welfare state; undocumented migrant workers, border violence, and human rights debates along
the U.S.-Mexican border; migration and gender (sex-trafficking); changes in international refugee laws and
immigration policy measures after 9/11; plurinational lives and transcultural identity formations; debates
on citizenship, social cohesion, integration, and assimilation; the pros and cons of open borders; and the
role of the media in the production of discourses on migration.
Course Descriptions as of October 2013
Rhetoric & Composition I
This course is the first of two language proficiency courses designed for American Studies majors. During
this course, students will be introduced to academic speaking and writing skills, with a particular focus on
the composition of argumentative essays and oral presentations. Through various writing and speaking
tasks oral and written language skills are developed, and basic academic skills (setting up a research
project, using academic source material, lucid argumentation) are acquired. After completing this
course, students will be able to communicate in English at least at the B2.2 level of the Common European
Framework of Reference (CEFR). This course is very much student-driven. This means that students are
responsible for their own learning process and progress. Motivation to improve your English and your
critical reasoning skills is essential to your success.
Rhetoric & Composition II
This second-year course completes the departmental program in Rhetoric and Composition. Building on
the foundations of academic writing laid in Rhetoric and Composition I, Rhetoric and Composition II
offers rigorous consolidation and additional practice in various forms of academic English while also
intensifying the focus on the subject-specific demands faced by students writing and speaking
argumentatively in an American Studies setting. Students will deepen their understanding of formal
argumentation and produce a series of argumentative essays (ranging in length from 1000 to 2500 words)
to demonstrate their grasp of scholarly language, argument, and structure; their ability to deal with
historical and theoretical contexts; and the quality of their research skills. Through the analysis of a
selection of academic articles and argumentative essays, students will study and learn to reproduce diverse
modes of scholarly rhetoric in both written and oral form. In the second half of the course, they give
individual oral presentations based on the arguments articulated in their final research essays. Throughout
the course, students are asked to reflect critically on their own writing and the writing of others, with the
aim of furnishing them with the skills that will be required for third-year research seminars and the
composition of their B.A. theses in the final year of the American Studies program.
Theories of Culture I: Race, Class and Gender in Contemporary American Society
At least since the identity movements of the 1960s (African American, Native American, Chicano/a,
feminist, gay and lesbian), the category of identity and its ideological underpinnings have become
fundamental aspects of the United States’ socio-cultural and political life. Yet whereas earlier forms of
identity discourses had focused on (often essentialist or biologically determinist) notions of race, ethnicity,
gender, or sexuality, current brands of race, ethnicity, class, and gender studies (including the burgeoning
field of men’s studies) have opened up new perspectives by redefining identity as a multi-dimensional
political, social, cultural, and ideological construct. Subdivided into three sections – on (1) gender, (2)
race/ethnicity, (3) class – this course introduces students to central concepts, major theorists, and current
controversies about the notions of identity in the context of contemporary U.S.- American society. As well
as theoretical skills, students will practice and develop their oral, written, and research skills in class
discussions, exercises and written assignments/exams.
Theories of Culture II: Media and Popular Culture
The course is designed for students who have grown up in a global multimedia environment and want to
become more literate and critical consumers of US culture, as well as cultural producers, or “prosumers,”
in their own right. We will explore political, institutional, industrial, historical, cultural and aesthetic
aspects of media through a variety of media forms, contexts, theories, and production/reception cultures.
Over the course of the semester, we will examine theoretical debates about the influence of media in
shaping knowledge, values, and desires, as well as our perceptions of society, culture, and nation. Students
will have the opportunity to analyze media texts, such as films, television shows, adverts, and popular
music. Key issues and debates include: representation; globalization; transmedia; fandom.
Course Descriptions as of October 2013
Theories of Culture III: Consumer Nation
This cross-disciplinary course starts by examining the idea of “culture” in conjunction with what is often
perceived to be its opposite, “nature” (“Nature produces culture which changes nature”). This part of the
course will explore diverse and contested meanings of “culture” in recent cultural theoretical contexts and
analyze a number of contemporary issues in the study of culture, including Culture Wars, popular culture,
and the globalization of culture. Next the course will shift its focus to an analysis of Marxist, neo-Marxist
and post-Marxist approaches to culture, notably of the role of ideology, power and signification (semiotics)
in processes of cultural formation. The course will end with an exploration of contemporary American
culture, concentrating on its mediated nature (“In America, life is cinema”), and the ins and outs of
America’s fast food culture, being a quintessential manifestation of America’s dominant cultural mode—
consumer capitalism.
Special Topics
Canada and the US: Political Negotiations of Cultural Differences
One of the most important elements of Canadian federal policy was the introduction of official
multiculturalism in the 1970s. In 1988, the federal government passed the Canadian Multiculturalism Act.
Central to this policy was the official recognition of the diverse cultures in a plural society. In
understanding official multiculturalism in a broader context, it is necessary to first examine its basic values.
This examination will be followed by a critical discussion of the situation of cultural and linguistic
minorities within Canada, which will for example touch upon questions of national identity, biculturalism,
and liberal multiculturalism. The course also includes a comparative perspective, using the Canadian
political perspective (based on the ideals of multiculturalism and bilingualism) to critique the US ideals of
the melting pot, assimilation, and monolingualism.
Dispatches: War in Modern American Literature and Culture
This course invites students to engage with a broad – and broadly defined – range of twentieth and twentyfirst century U.S. war writing and culture from the Philippine-American War to the so-called “Terror
Wars” of more recent years. We will examine the centrality of war to the U.S. experience and trace some of
the ways in which different conflicts have been represented, remembered, celebrated and/or critiqued, from
the early twentieth-century anti-imperialist writings of Mark Twain to more recent accounts of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. We will read reportage, fiction, poetry, photography, film, art, popular music and
material objects as part of a theoretically diverse, strongly interdisciplinary investigation into the complex
meanings that war, its representation, and its cultural politics have held within the modern United States.
Rousing Rhetoric: The Power of Speech in American Public Political Discourse
In this course we will study the medium of the speech as a defining feature and force of change in
American political culture, past and present. After becoming familiar with the theory behind rhetoric,
students will apply this knowledge by making a rhetorical analysis of several speeches. Finally, to put
theory into practice, students will assume the role of orator and present their findings in a debate with a
fellow student.
Course Descriptions as of October 2013
“That’s not Constitutional!” The Long Shadow of the United State Constitution
If one wants to understand American political culture, one should start with the United States Constitution.
This 225-year old document does far more than organize and regulate the different branches of
government. The Constitution is revered by many Americans as a sacred text that contains the core values
of the Republic and defines what it means to be “American.” In this course, we will explore the values and
principles in the Constitution that have shaped and continue to shape the United States. We will analyze
first the content, history, and present meaning of the Constitution, after which students will focus on one of
the many controversies that continue to divide and define the United States. This will result in a research
paper that students will defend before a jury of peers.
Failed Colonies
Accounts of the colonization of the Americas often represent Europeans’ success as inevitable. Colonizers
had “guns, germs, and steel” and native peoples were bound to give way before them. But most colonial
projects failed, sooner or later. Although their names may have been scrubbed from maps and memory,
many defunct colonies had legacies that lasted long after they expired. This course examines the history
and literature of failed colonies in the early modern Americas. It considers why most settlements initially
struggled with survival, why some collapsed after successful starts, and why others only appeared in
visionary proposals. It considers the difficulties colonizers faced in building new societies, polities, and
economies in unfamiliar environments among wary and often hostile neighbors. Alongside this analysis of
causes and effects, the course considers historical representations of these failures. It explores the factbased fictions of colonizer-castaways, the arguments of early modern critics of colonialism, as well as the
moral, political, and imperial lessons that contemporaries learned from failure.
Minor
Through the choice of a Minor, you can tailor-fit the curriculum to meet your academic, personal and
professional interests. Students may pursue a Minor in either Spanish, Film Studies, International
Relations, Non-Western Studies and Journalism Studies.
For more information about the American Studies minor options, please visit the following website:
http://www.rug.nl/let/education/bachelor/minoren/
Capstone Project
The thesis is the culminating research essay in the BA degree program and forms a capstone experience for
undergraduate students. It is an opportunity for students to put what they have learned (knowledge,
understanding and skills in American Studies) into practice by setting up and carrying out an academically
sound research project within clearly delimited boundaries. The BA thesis in American Studies is an
extended, scholarly essay, which will be supervised by a designated member of the academic staff. It
should demonstrate the capacity for (semi-)independent research, thought, judgment and writing. It should
comply with the substantive and formal requirements and conventions of an argumentative essay. In other
words, your thesis should have an introduction with a clearly-expressed thesis; chapters or sections in
which the argument is developed through appropriate paragraphing, the use of academic vocabulary and
appropriate secondary materials; a conclusion which indicates the general significance/application of your
thesis to a particular field of research within American Studies, or to significant trends or developments in
the field as a whole. The production of the thesis encourages independence of thought and requires students
to acquire, process, and present complex material in a systematic fashion. It develops skills appropriate to
upper BA level and provides the foundational skills for an MA degree.
Course Descriptions as of October 2013