American Studies – (B.Sc.)

Contents

The academic year is subdivided into two semesters. Each semester consists of up to 14 weeks of instruction, with a mid-term reading week, and a four-week exam period after the end of each semester. Normally, students can earn 30 credits per semester, or 60 credits per year. The credit point system used at the University of Groningen is based on the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), which has been adopted by almost all universities across Europe. One credit point corresponds to 28 hours of studying, and most courses within the Faculty of Arts are worth 10 ECTS.

The Bachelor degree consists of a Major of 120 ECTS earned in core American Studies courses, as well as a Minor of 30 ECTS and 30 ECTS worth of electives. The elective courses can be chosen from a wide range of Minors offered elsewhere in the Faculty of Arts (or beyond), or you may select various courses to suit your interests. In principle, you will take the designated Minor (consisting of courses in the wider domain of American Studies) at one of our nine partner universities in the U.S. Those students who are unable to study in the U.S. will choose a designated Minor from a list of subjects approved by the exam board.

Most courses are taught in either lecture or seminar format. While lectures are mostly used during the first year to offer students an introductory- level overview of a given topic, seminars provide a more in-depth and highly interactive learning environment. They usually consist of no more than 15-20 students and ask for your active participation in discussing texts that you have read and prepared at home.

In contrast to high school, you will find that at university, you will have fewer classes per week, but at the same time you will be expected to do quite a bit of reading and independent work at home. This form of regular self-study is crucial for successfully mastering your coursework.

1st year BA American StudiesThe first year of our Bachelor program will introduce you to multiple facets of modern and contemporary American society, including the media and popular culture, literature, race and gender relations, the impact of the capitalist ideology on America´s southern neighbor, as well as America´s recent history and contentious definitions of the U.S.´s national identity and role in the world. All first-year courses are interlaced with a number of core theoretical concepts and ideas which will provide you with the necessary tools to understand and analyze the complexity of contemporary American culture and cultural products. In addition, you will also follow language courses on American English, which will not only increase your overall proficiency in both written and spoken English, but also teach you how to do formal presentations and write argumentative essays in the target language. These language courses, combined with the fact that the entire Bachelor program is taught in English, will allow you to reach a high level of proficiency in both written and spoken English by the end of your studies.

During the first semester, the groundwork will be laid by the course Modern American History, which covers the period from the American Civil War (1860s) to the current presidency of George W. Bush and illuminates America´s rise to the world´s only remaining superpower. This course is complemented by Modern American Culture, in which you will analyze key literary and cultural texts from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century in order to understand the dynamic cultural changes taking place in America in response to social, economic and political developments like the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the most noticeable ways in which American culture impacts on our own daily lives is through its popular culture, including TV drama series and soaps, Hollywood movies, music, cartoons, and popular fiction. The course Culture, Arts and Media will allow you to study these phenomena while introducing you to key theories of popular culture that enable you to develop a more critical and analytical perspective on the ways in which the media shape our sense of who we are, our notions about race, class, and gender, as well as our consumption habits.

The course Identity and Ideology approaches issues of race, class, gender, and ideology in contemporary American society from a more theoretical angle and will enable you to answer questions such as: how do racism and hostility towards other ethnicities or religions emerge? Why are successful African Americans like Barack Obama often rejected by the African American community? Is there a biological basis for the gender-role divisions in contemporary American society? How do ideologies like the American Dream influence developing countries in Latin America? And how has the War on Terror changed the U.S.´s self-understanding and immigration policy after 9/11?

2nd year BA American Studies

While allowing you to pursue elective courses, the second year will also enable you to expand and deepen the knowledge you have acquired during your first year by opening up the perspective to new disciplines and earlier historical periods. The course Early American History will offer a survey of the roots of American culture from its pre-European origins to the mid-nineteenth-century Civil War, highlighting in particular the impact of European colonization on the Native population, the development of the slave system, the American War of Independence, and the nation´s struggle to establish itself as a republic. Focusing on the same historical period, Early American Culture introduces you to some of the most influential texts that highlight the dynamic changes taking place in America during the colonial and Revolutionary era.

Among other things, this course will look at the ways in which authors like Crèvecoeur, Jefferson, and Franklin "invented" an American identity and paved the way for the U.S.´s current self-understanding as an exceptional global leader whose task it is to bring freedom and democracy to other parts of the world. The course American Constitutional Law will look at America´s development from colony to independent nation from a legal perspective, focusing in particular on the historical roots of America´s constitution in European Enlightenment thought, before moving on to more contemporary issues such as the workings of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidency and presidential elections.

3rd year BA American Studies

The third and final year of our Bachelor program will be shaped by advanced-level research and theory seminars. In addition, you will also have the opportunity to develop your own individual profile by selecting a designated minor. In principle, this minor will be taken at one of our nine partner universities in the U.S., provided that your study progress allows you to qualify for our American exchange program. Spending a semester in the U.S. will enable you to choose freely from your host university´s course offerings, as long as these courses relate to the field of American Studies and have been approved by the department. You can specialize, for example, in American history by focusing primarily on historical subjects. Similar options are available in the fields of American foreign policy, American economics, American mass media, as well as a wide range of other aspects of American literature and culture. The selections are manifold, and your study adviser will be happy to help you make the right choices.

During the second semester, you will follow an advanced-level research seminar on a core topic of American culture or history. In the past, our topics ranged from the American Civil War to race relations, religion, social class divisions, or environmentalism in the U.S. This research seminar will be complemented by the advanced-level theory module Theories of Culture, which will explore diverse meanings of (American) culture in a wide range of theoretical texts and contexts, with special attention to issues of consumerism, individualism, free-market capitalism, and American cultural imperialism. Both of these courses will prepare you for your Bachelor thesis project, which will conclude your Bachelor degree. Once you have completed your Bachelor in American Studies, you can proceed to the Master program in American Studies, or can choose any other of a large number of Master programs offered by the University of Groningen or by other universities in The Netherlands and abroad.