American Studies

What is American Studies?

American Studies is a partnership between U.S. History and English 11 that works toward common understandings about the American experience. At its most basic level, the course will explore what it means to be an American, and whether the American way is the best way.

Why American Studies?

Traditionally, most high schools in America have students take one year of U.S. History and one year of American Literature. These courses are usually taught separately, with little attempt to connect the ideas within them. In addition, the history is almost inevitably taught chronologically, from the arrival of the first Europeans on up through the late 20th Century.

We believe, however, that there is a better way. The connection between history and literature is too important to ignore. Combining the two courses into one benefits students in several ways. First, two teachers working together should be better able to help the student with the multiple aspects of the work. Teachers who are working together will be better able to make and emphasize connections between the historical and literary material being studied. Two enduring understandings gained during this course are:

1. Understanding American history can provide insight into the literature of a given time period.

2. Literature is often a reflection of the moods, beliefs, and issues that are prevalent during a specific historical time period.

In order to connect the ideas of history and literature more clearly, the course is taught thematically rather than chronologically. This allows students to see the bigger picture of history and to think as a historian would. Since history is about ideas – ideas that shape and influence people and where people are going in their lives, historians need to take a close look at how things change, what forces create such change, whether people learn from mistakes, and where society might be headed. These topics are most easily explored when one is not bound by a strict chronological study, but rather when one can make comparisons of how people from different time periods dealt with similar problems and change.

Likewise, literature is not simply about comprehension, technical matters such as metaphors, narrative structure, and irony. Although interesting, these are only small aspects of study since literature is about life. Literature reflects human motivation, behavior, and relationships; it is about society and its effects on the individual, about philosophy and big issues with which man has always dealt.

Ultimately, the course is designed to make literature and history more applicable to the lives of students.

How is American Studies structured?

The course is taught as a block of two periods in which all students in a given block share the same English teacher and the same history teacher. On most days, half of the block will be with one of these teachers during the first hour, while the other half will be with the other teacher. During the second hour, each group will switch teachers, just as students do in other classes during the rest of the day. Some flexibility exists with this type of scheduling. Every student will be studying the same thematic unit at the same time, while completing the same unit assessments. Through a variety of methods, emphasizing different learning styles, students will be focused on learning and exploring several enduring understandings and essential learnings over the course of the year.