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