Graduate Studies

The Program in American Studies offers an interdisciplinary approach to the histories, literatures, philosophies, music, visual cultures, social formations, economics, and politics of the U.S. Compelling matters of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, environmentalism, technology, the arts, region, religion, the built environment, citizenship and activism take their proper and vital place in the curriculum of study as well as the U.S.’s place within globalization.

American Studies supports graduate students at Vanderbilt in several ways: it offers a Graduate Certificate program; sponsors a finishing year dissertation fellowship in conjunction with the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities; funds two students to attend the “Futures of American Studies Institute” at Dartmouth each summer; runs a spring conference in conjunction with the American Studies graduate workshop; and organizes a Working Paper Series for new research.