American Studies

Studying American culture and history illuminates the crucial role the US has played in shaping the modern world, as well as the tensions around race, class, and gender that have fuelled the expression and reception of the nation's founding values.

Our department houses the largest concentration of US-focused postgraduates and academics in Britain and is dedicated to examining the full breadth of this history.

If you already have a clear idea of the area and topic you wish to research as a PhD, then you can effectively lay the ground work for this by doing a masters by research. Particular areas of research specialism include:

- African American literature, history and culture

- American art and visual culture

- American intellectual history

- American labour history

- American music and popular culture

- American political history

- American print culture and book history

- Asian American literature and culture

- Border studies

- Civil rights and social justice

- Contemporary American fiction

- Crime, prisons and criminal justice

- Feminist theory

- Gender and queer studies

- Indigenous culture

- Latinx culture

- Memory Studies

- Nineteenth-century American literature and culture

- US foreign policy