Welcome to the Department of American Studies
The Department of American Studies is an interdisciplinary department that offers B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees based on rigorous, socially engaged scholarship. We take a hemispheric approach to the Americas, examining local cultures, nations, and regions within geopolitical contexts. Building on our traditional strengths in American Indian studies, critical race theory, feminism, class analysis, and community engagement, the department encourages scholarly investigations into history, politics, visual cultures, literary and oral cultures, environmental and agricultural practices, religions, gender, sexualities, kinship systems, geography, and economics.
Reclaiming the repressed voices, histories, and cultures of muted peoples in the Americas has been a central mission of American Studies Departments since the 1960s. UB's Department of American Studies coordinates one of the strongest American Indian Studies programs in the United States. In addition, our faculty's creation and implementation of new technologies that open up powerful possibilities for accessing and documenting such histories has situated our department at the forefront of historiography in the Americas. Our research strengths include American Indian, especially Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history, art, and culture; the Black Atlantic and the African diaspora in the Americas; the Asian diaspora in the Americas; Chicana/o, Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American studies; Canadian studies; immigrant cultures; oral history and documentary studies; feminist and queer studies; working-class history; public policy; urban studies; popular culture; visual cultures; transnational approaches to American history, politics and culture; critical race theory; border studies; and the history and literature of transatlantic slavery, resistance, dissent, and revolution.
The Department of American Studies would like to welcome Theresa McCarthy and Cynthia Wu, both tenure-track Assistant Professors.
News
October 15, 2008
Humanities Institute New Faculty Seminar Series
830 Clemens Hall - 1:00 pm
October 30 - November 1, 2008
Humanities Institute Annual Conference
Topic: MADNESS AND CIVILIZATIONS
November 7, 2008
Scholars at Muse Series
Muse Restaurant - 4:00 pm
Albright Knox Art Gallery
1285 Elmwood Ave.
November 19, 2008
Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship Lecture
830 Clemens Hall - 4:00 pm