What is American Studies?

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. Typically, the program has over two dozen majors (plus additional minors), but it also draws students from all over the university to its 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 is an undergraduate degree at Temple, with distinguished faculty drawn from a range of disciplines in the College of Liberal Arts. The program also employs adjunct faculty such as lawyers, Philadelphia Historical Commission personnel, and distinguished men and women from the civic community. A number of American Studies faculty have won awards for their undergraduate teaching and for their scholarly work.

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.

The program is currently involved in a number of initiatives to improve and augment opportunities for Temple undergraduates. It houses the new Asian American Studies minor at Temple, which has developed a number of courses relating to Asian American culture and diversity. Together with faculty from the Film and Media Arts Department and from Journalism (in the School of Communications and Theater), we recently began a new joint undergraduate major called American Culture and Media Arts, which is intended for people seeking careers in media-related educational and entertainment organizations. The program also houses Temple's new Organizational Studies program, a degree completion program involving both traditional and "distance" learning; this program is aimed at adults who are returning to college.

Temple's American Studies faculty have played leading roles in the creation of the recent Encyclopedia of American Studies (Grolier, four volumes), contributing over a dozen authoritative articles to that work. In addition, Miles Orvell, the foremr Director of American Studies, has served as the Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia, which is sponsored by the national American Studies Association.

Go to the Encyclopedia of American Studies