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NEWS AND EVENTS
Join us in congratulating Miles Orvell. The American Studies Association has awarded Professor Orvell the Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize. This honor is given to an individual for a lifetime of achievement and service within the field of American Studies. Again, congratulations Miles Orvell. For the second year in a row, a Temple student has won the Francis J. Ryan Award in Undergraduate Research from the Mid-Atlantic American Studies Association. Congratulations to this year's winner, Meghan Milligan. Director of American Studies, Bryant Simon, talks about the Great Depression and the New Depression. Click here to read. Congratulations to Dr. Whitney Strub for winning a Martin Duberman Visiting Fellowship from the New York Public Library. Check out the new exhibit at the American Studies gallery, outside of Anderson Hall 943. It features the photographs of Betsy Manning and is called, "Architectural Wallflowers: Introverted Building." After checking it out, join the blog conversation about the photographs. To see an article about the images click here. American Studies Professor Seth Bruggeman talks about the meaning of historic sites. [Read More] Sign up to be a member of the group American Studies at Temple on Facebook. This will give you information about the program and what's happening. See the exciting new book by Warren Hoffman who is teaching in the program this semester. [Find out more] American Studies Professor Miles Orvell talks about the Great Depression, Art, and the New Depression [Read Story] Congratulations to Whitney Strub, a new instructor in American Studies. The June 2008 issue of American Quarterly -- the leading journal in American Studies -- featured his article, "The Clearly Obscene and the Queerly Obscene: Hetronormativity and Obscenity in Cold War Los Angeles." Beth English's article, "'I have...a lot of work to do': Cotton Mill Work and Women's Culture in Matoaca, Virginia, 1888-95,"was selected by a distinguished group of scholars for inclusion in the Organization of American Historian's forthcoming book, The Best American History Essays 2008 to be published later this year by Palgrave Macmillan! Lisa Rhodes's book Electric Ladyland recently garnered a distinguished honorable mention in the competiton for the prestigous Woody Guthrie Award given each year by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US Branch (IASPM-US) for the the most distinguished monograph in popular music studies written in the English language.
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CONTACT American Studies Program Phone: 215.204.2429 NEW COURSES FOR SPRING 10 Honors Class -- Soul and the City FEATURE Listen to Bryant Simon talk about his new book, Everything but the Coffee, on the NPR show, Here and Now. Temple's American Studies faculty have played leading roles in the creation of the Encyclopedia of American Studies (Grolier, four volumes), contributing over a dozen authoritative articles to that work. In addition, Miles Orvell, the former Director of American Studies, served as the Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia and now serves as Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online, which is sponsored by the national American Studies Association and is published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
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"My present employment requires me to work with people of many countries from around the globe coming to the United States for the first time. My American Studies education prepared me to interpret their views of my country, as well as explain the ever-changing face of America to them. American Studies at Temple was not the conclusion of my education. It is a solid base upon which my future educations -- both classroom and otherwise -- can be constructed." Benjamin Helwig, Class of 1998 WHAT IS AMERICAN STUDIES? American Studies focuses on the examination of American culture from an interdisciplinary perspective. We look for the central themes of American life -- labor, mobility, migration, art, place, race, and play -- without restricting ourselves to disciplinary boundaries. "Work in America," for instance, investigates the history of work, compares the American work ethic to the role of work in other countries and times, explores how workers themselves think and talk about work in song, poems, stories, and photographs, considers how work affects self-definition, and looks at to our own families dealt with and experienced some of these themes. All in all, we offer an exciting approach to understanding the ever changing and contested values and nature of American life. WHO WE ARE Founded in 1974, American Studies at Temple has had a long tradition as a major which stresses small class size, the close mentoring of students, and excellent instruction. We offer courses on such subjects as American film and popular culture, photography and the arts, technology and culture, cities and suburbs, ethnicity and immigration, race and gender issues, law in American society, and several courses dealing with Philadelphia -- its history and ongoing culture.American Studies stresses close faculty-student relationships, essentially because we believe that undergraduate students need careful guidance through their college years and into their early careers. In recent years, our students have gone on to successful careers with civic organizations, in fields as diverse as social work and retail marketing, and in the law. Nationally, American Studies majors are the second highest scorers (behind Physics majors) on the law school admissions test. American Studies stresses the development of basic reading, writing, and analytical skills that are necessary for successful careers in various professional fields. Our courses typically focus on major U.S. issues such as work, technology, and the role of the media and the arts, that is, on the major public issues that will continue to shape much of American life and that sophisticated professionals must know. American Studies courses are known as demanding and rigorous, and many of them double as Temple University Honors courses. |