Departmental Brochure

The great variety of institutions, subcultures, and traditions encompassed by American civilization provide a broad and fascinating field of study that has emerged in the past 50 years with America's world power status. For the past 25 years, Fairfield University has offered an undergraduate program in American Studies with an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complexities of the American experience.

As a major in this field, you will also select a concentration in one of five traditional academic disciplines. You may then design a course of study with your faculty advisor to pursue a particular interest, while also being introduced to a comprehensive and unified approach to American life and thought.

The success of the program's graduates in business, law, education, and public service provides ample evidence of its place in the great tradition of liberal arts education.

Course of Study

To complete the 30-credit major in American Studies, you must take 10 courses including:

• Four America-related courses from one of the following disciplines: history, literature, politics, sociology, or visual and performing arts.
• Four courses related to aspects of American civilization. These must be from outside the discipline of concentration and must include at least three disciplines.
• A seminar on the American Intellectual Tradition, usually taken in the junior year.
• A research/theme course, taken in the senior year, provides a valuable capstone experience.

The minor program in American Studies requires three American-related courses in a discipline concentration; two elective American-related courses outside the concentration; and the seminar on the American Intellectual Tradition.

You will choose your courses in consultation with faculty from among a wide variety of America-related courses.

A sampling includes:

American Studies

• Literature and Painting: The American Tradition
• America in Film
• Literature and Religion: The American Experience
• The American Civil War: Myth and Reality
• America in the 1930s: Decade of Change
• Business of Sports

History

• Colonial America
• Jeffersonian and Jacksonian America
• The Emergence of the Modern United States
• American Constitution, I & II
• U.S. Foreign Relations, I & II
• Working People, 19th and 20th Century America
• Social Movements in American Political History
• History of the Cold War
• Twentieth-Century America
• The Indian in American History

Literature

• Race, Culture, and American Realism
• American Indian Literature
• American Novel
• Early African-American Literature
• Contemporary Women Writers of Color
• Colonial American Literature
• American Romanticism
• American Literature, 1865-1920
• American Literature, 1920-1950
• American Literature, 1950-Present
• Myth in American Literature

Philosophy

• Ethical Theories in America
• American Philosophy

Politics

• American Political Thought
• The American Presidency
• Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Public Opinion
• U.S. Foreign Policy
• Vietnam and the American Experience
• Urban Politics
• U.S. Congress
• Supreme Court, I & II
• Private Power and Public Policy
• Media and Politics
• Politics of Mass Popular Culture

Religious Studies

• Non-Traditional American Religious Churches
• American Catholic Theologians
• Religious Values and Public Policy
• Non-Traditional American Religious Groups

Sociology

• American Society
• Business and Society
• American Class Structure
• Criminology
• Sociology of Sports
• Race and Ethnic Relations
• Urban/Suburban Sociology
• Women: Work and Sport
• Sociology of Law

Visual and Performing Arts

• American Architecture
• Art in America: Colonial and Early Republic
• Art in America: 19th and 20th Centuries
• History of Jazz
• American Popular Music
• American Drama
• The History and Development of Rock
• George Gershwin
• The American Film

The Faculty

The American Studies program draws from the strengths of the entire faculty of the College of Arts & Sciences for its teaching resources. The Director of the Program is committed to it full-time and is listed here with the executive committee of the American Studies undergraduate and graduate programs.

Mary Ann Carolan
Ph.D., Yale University
Italian Studies

Martha LoMonaco
Ph.D., New York University
Visual and Performing Arts

David McFadden
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
History

Leo F. O'Connor
Ph.D., New York University
American Studies

John D. Orman
Ph.D., Indiana University
Politics

Kurt Schlichting
Ph.D., New York University
Sociology and Anthropology

Michael White
Ph.D., University of Denver
English and American Literature

Real World Education

American Studies is popular with students both as a major and minor, because it offers them insights into the society in which most of them grew up and where they will live and work for the rest of their lives. The flexibility of designing a program of study from a wide variety of courses is one of the most attractive aspects of this major. Because the program combines so well with other majors or minors, it offers an extra edge in moving into professional life or graduate study.

Double majors that combine American Studies with a traditional academic discipline are common. You can major in American Studies and combine it with a major or minor in history or politics in a way that enriches every aspect of your studies. The possibilities are many, and your choices add significantly to your qualifications for postgraduate careers.

Research Opportunities

As a major in American Studies, you will be obliged to write a significant research paper on some aspect of American civilization. This project is your capstone for the major. It is undertaken in senior year after you have had the opportunity to absorb the methodologies of one or more disciplines and time to choose a topic in accord with your developing interests. You will have the benefit of a faculty advisor for this project who will encourage you to take an interdisciplinary approach. Finally, you will present your paper and defend it before the program faculty and your peers in American Studies.

Over the years, American Studies majors have won more College of Arts and Sciences project awards than any other major by entering their senior projects in competition for the prestigious Humanities and Social Sciences Independent Project Awards.

Life After Fairfield

American Studies majors follow no single path after graduation. Many pre-law students major in American Studies and have earned admission to the law schools at Cornell, Georgetown, American University, Duke, Fordham, and the Universities of Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, among others. Other recent graduates have gone to medical school, doctoral programs in literature and political science, and careers in theater, cable television, banking, market research, investment banking, education, and journalism.

Profile

Stefanie Hennes
American Studies major and a member of Phi Beta Kappa

"In this program, we've focused on different eras in American development, from the Puritans right up to the present. But that's not all; we also looked at American life and tradition from all sorts of unusual areas, such as jazz, sociology, and religion.

It helps to broaden your views of what it means to be American as well as the different components that make up this nation. I decided to do my concentration in politics, as this has always been one of my passions, and I believe that doing so will provide me with a strong academic basis when I attend law school next year. As for my 45-page independent research project, I appreciate that I had the opportunity to focus on a topic that really meant a lot to me personally - Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her work with Special Olympics."

For further information, please contact:
Dr. Leo F. O'Connor, Director
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06824-5195
Tel: (203) 254-4000, ext. 2801
E-mail: lfoconnor@mail.fairfield.edu