The Master’s in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam is a one-year program, taught entirely in English, covering the history, politics, and culture of the United States. We are based in history, but our students come from many disciplines: literature, media studies, cultural studies, sociology, art history and more. Interdisciplinary pollination means our field of inquiry is broad: Moby-Dick and Mickey Mouse, the sentimental novel and the war on terror. We study American politics, but also the power of culture.
Our approach is international. “America,” as dream or nightmare, is an outsider’s myth as well as a concrete reality; international perspectives have always informed American Studies as a field. Our students gain a deeper understanding of America’s hidden histories, from colonization to global empire.
The US looms peculiarly large in contemporary life and media; a deeper understanding of America’s hidden histories is an important asset. That is what American Studies offers: insight into the world we live in, and the world that will confront graduates in future pursuits.
The program runs from September to July and comprises 60 ECTS: 42 credits for core courses and electives, and 18 for the Master’s thesis, an original work of scholarship on a subject of your own choosing.
We aim to balance breadth, focus, and flexibility. We encourage students to follow their interests and, just as importantly, to hone new ones. Our courses train students in the skills of research and writing, and aim to unlock an Americanist’s interdisciplinary sensibility.
To apply, visit the Graduate School of the Humanities website.
Fall Courses
1. Major Issues in American History - 12 ECTS
Learning objectives
- This course familiarizes students with major debates about American history and with key theoretical and methodological issues in American Studies scholarship. It also hones skills in academic writing.
- Students learn to think historiographically and narratively about scholarship, to navigate a field and a sub-field, to understand the changes in scholarly debate over time, and to differentiate between major works and minor works.
- We will also consider the relationship between disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship, a relationship central to the identity of American Studies.
Description
This is the core course in scholarship and methodology for Masters students in American Studies. We will focus on major debates about American history and culture, with close attention each week to an influential scholarly text from the past several decades. This includes classic works as well as recent scholarship. Our first goal is to become sophisticated critical readers: to see how successful scholarship uses sources and theory to develop compelling arguments. Our second goal is to navigate the scholarly landscape of American Studies with historiographical sophistication. Though this course is not a synthesis, the texts do afford a broad view of American history, especially the topics of revolution, foreign policy, slavery, and immigration, among others. We will also become acquainted with key methodological problems in American Studies, and learn to navigate an interdisciplinary field. This includes inquiries into the categories of gender, race, and class, and into the problem of “American exceptionalism.” We will also be concerned with the relationship between history, literary studies, and the social sciences. Students will write a critical historiographical essay, and work done in this class may very well help students hone their thesis subjects.
2. America Inside Out: International Perspectives on the United States – 12 ECTS
Learning objectives
- The interpretation and discovery of primary sources in American Studies, be they canonical, classic, or obscure.
- The mastery of different interpretive scales and the development of research inquiries in American Studies.
- The refinement of written and spoken argumentation.
Description
The United States has long kindled the imagination or the ire of foreign artists, novelists, sociologists, revolutionaries, and cultural critics. As land of opportunity or cultural wasteland, technological vanguard or pastoral state of nature, “America” has been defined as much from without as from within. “America” has also been important to the endeavor of non-American peoples to articulate a cultural distinctiveness in harmony with, or against, the United States. This seminar explores key documents in American cultural history alongside foreign perspectives of the United States, in different genres and from many regions, illuminating hitherto unseen dimensions of American culture and the impact of the U.S. abroad. Attention falls on the 19th century—notably Alexis de Tocqueville’s paradigmatic Democracy in America—and on what is often called either the “American Century” or the “transatlantic century.”
One of our broad topics is the United States as “land of the future,” as the 19th- and 20th-century archetype of modernity. American industrial capitalism (unhindered by a strong regulatory state or a powerful labor movement) lent itself to both critique and admiration from outside observers. This topic generates its opposite: America as site of backwardness, reaction, age, and imperial decline.
This is a humanities research course, and students are encouraged to discover previously unknown, neglected, or untranslated material, and to approach American culture and society from these new angles. Informed by the historical materials examined throughout the semester, students may also consider contemporary foreign commentary on the U.S., in the realms of politics, diplomacy, literature, and the arts.
Electives (Spring)
In the spring, seminars are more specialized and often have a topical theme. The program offers two spring electives: “Distrust and Democracy: An American Study,” and “America First and Foreign Policy: Think Tanks and the Global Role of the United States in the Era of Trump.”
Students can also tailor their program to their own interests with courses offered by other Master’s programs. Subject to approval by the Examinations Board, you may also select electives from other Master’s programs at the UvA or at other universities in the Netherlands.
Thesis
To write a thesis is to enter the community of scholars; in American Studies, students write a thesis of their own design, in close consultation with teachers. In January, a thesis preparation helps students hone their thesis subjects, discover primary sources, and place their inquiries within relevant scholarly fields. In the spring, alongside their electives, students continue their research and writing, in close consultation with faculty advisers.
To apply, visit the Graduate School of the Humanities website.