Northwestern’s American Studies program invites students to see the United States not as a static nation-state but as a dynamic, contested idea shaped by migration, empire, and cultural exchange. Team-taught gateway courses pair historians with literature scholars, sociologists with media theorists, encouraging multifaceted analysis of everything from the Constitution to hip-hop. Small cohorts foster intellectual community and individualized advising, while Chicago’s museums, archives, and neighborhoods provide a living laboratory for field research. Graduates emerge with agile interpretive skills, equipped to tackle careers in law, public policy, journalism, museum curation, or graduate research.
Design an interactive timeline tracing immigrant foodways along Route 66
Compare environmental justice narratives in Flint and post-Katrina New Orleans
Analyze Supreme Court oral-argument transcripts for rhetoric on tribal sovereignty
Produce a podcast on Chicago blues as a lens into Great Migration histories
Create an exhibit on the evolution of U.S. protest iconography since 1776
Use census data to visualize suburbanization and racial segregation 1950–2020
Write a policy memo on the cultural heritage implications of coastal erosion
Study representations of the American Dream in contemporary Netflix series
Develop a VR reconstruction of a 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition pavilion
Conduct oral histories of Dreamer activists organizing on Midwest campuses
Map LGBTQ+ spaces in Chicago from 1920s speakeasies to present-day clubs
Examine agricultural labor songs for cross-border cultural exchange themes
Survey political campaign ads to track shifts in populist rhetoric since 1968
Assess social-media discourse on national monuments’ contested symbolism
Curate a zine series on disability activism in post-war America
Gain a 360-degree view of the United States through Northwestern’s collaborative American Studies major.
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