About the Program

The American Studies Department at Rutgers was founded in 1969 by Professor Michael Aaron Rockland. It began as a small department, affiliated with Douglass College. The department’s offices are still located at Douglass, but American Studies majors now come from all the colleges in New Brunswick-Piscataway. They bring a variety of interests and skills to a lively and collegial undergraduate program.

American Studies is an interdisciplinary major that offers students the opportunity to study the complex history and culture of the United States. We ask students to explore the diverse racial and cultural encounters that have shaped the American past and will continue to shape the futures of both the Mid-Atlantic region and the United States. We approach the intellectual problems raised by life in the Americas and the United States through a variety of disciplines. Our core faculty and our affiliated faculty specialize in African American Studies, Art History, film studies, folklore, the history and culture of New Jersey, the history of sexuality, Jewish studies, Latino studies, literature, popular culture, print culture, urban history, visual culture, and women’s and gender studies. We also sponsor courses in ethnic studies, historic preservation, popular music, and technology.

As a faculty, we are dedicated to teaching our students to write well, to speak articulately, and to think independently, critically, and creatively.