Creative. Dynamic. Inquisitive.
Our capacious approach to American Studies is interdisciplinary and hemispheric. Our teaching and scholarship draws on methodologies from fields including Anthropology, Cultural Studies, English and Literary Studies, History, Media Studies, Performance Studies, Sociology, and Political Science. We uniquely combine arts, humanities, and social sciences in our study of the United States.
We contribute to the mission of the University of Virginia by equipping students to be engaged citizens, and by generating new knowledge and understanding of the nation and world that they inherit. We house the University wide Minors of Asian American Pacific Studies; Latinx Studies; and Native American Indigenous Studies.
Students in the American Studies major study US culture and its local, regional, national, and global forms and effects. Our methods are interdisciplinary and creative—meaning we combine the best approaches from the traditional disciplines, often to ask unconventional questions of unconventional sources.
We are also an intellectual community committed to fostering interactions between undergraduates and faculty members.