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Salzburg Global Fellow Raluca-Nicoleta Rogoveanu writes about the challenges of making American Studies relevant for students today

This op-ed piece is part of a series, written by Fellows of the Salzburg Global Seminar program "Democracy on the Front Lines: Polarization, Culture and Resilience in America and the World."

Gone are the days when American Studies theorists and practitioners alike treaded the field with firm commanding steps. The realm which they envisioned is still there and able to generate significant research opportunities in the humanities and social sciences. However, the concept of America has undergone massive change, and is likely to generate sensitive and nuanced conversations about central/challenging/unstable intellectual issues relevant for the United States.

Coming from the subfield of American literature, early 20th century Americanists focused on literary criticism, historiography and critical theory, while poetics and storytelling became the favorite strategies of cultural analysis. When voices from (outside) the field challenged the limitations of a literature-based syllabus and lobbied for more expansive contexts intended to amplify the meaning of stories, historical, anthropological, literary, religious, sociological, biological, or economic aspects and interpretations were added to the mix. The addition of social sciences held in store the promise of methodological rigor through quantitative and qualitative methods alike. Yet, the sense of “playfulness”, “reflexivity”, “synergy” and “synthesis” (Paul Lauter) that ensured the success of the discipline in previous decades seemed to have been best preserved by J. Farrel’s “pluralistic eclecticism” and Jones’ “leap beyond methodology”. 

The “humanities in crisis” refrain has been a staple in the collective discourse of lament for a good part of the 20th century. Yet, despite scholars deploring the little room left for humane pursuits, the number of students graduating from American Studies programs was not in alarming decline and the many opportunities for assistant professors to become tenured in humanities-related fields rendered such complaints moot. As archives, universities, academic presses, and federal funding agencies redefined humanities, traditional disciplinary, institutional, and departmental boundaries have become more fluid. Scholars trained as Mexicanists, U.S. Americanists, Brazilianists, Chicana or Diaspora Studies specialists came together to reconfigure the discourse of American studies by giving it an explicitly comparative leaning and rethinking the field’s intellectual premises within the context of new geopolitical formations. The “transnational turn” provided insightful perspectives on cosmopolitan, global and transatlantic perspectives. Further investigation in interdisciplinary areas such as ecocriticism, media theory and urban theory expanded and enriched the field. 

In the process of expanding the scope of American Studies, its discourse has developed a lingo of its own. As we took to the business of word coinage, “hyper”, “meta” and other “ism” and “nesses”, neological constructions have created an intimidating intellectual space, designed to keep non-Americanists at bay. One of the challenges of doing American Studies in the new millennium might be just that: in a time of information overload, to use a level-headed, efficient and unspeculative approach, with a discourse supple and simple rather than verbose and obscure, intended to point out fresh connections among existing things, between contemporary developments in American society, culture, and politics and other national cultures. 

Yet another challenge lies in making American Studies relevant for prospective undergraduate or graduate students, who are looking for “practical” areas of concentration. As they equate practicality to “employability upon graduation”, we need to live up to the  promises expressed in American studies program leaflets and empower our students to combine and decode diverse source materials, to express and evaluate reasoned arguments, to distinguish between interpretations of cultural issues, to think about the causes of cultural change, to assess the impact of cultural factors on human institutions and activity and to compare cultural patterns to enhance understanding.

Finally, it is up to the energy of American studies people to keep the intellectual effervescence of the field, through collaborative research, collaborative venues and ventures and through welcoming opportunities that put us on the cusp of emerging trends in American Studies. To this end, the Salzburg Global American Studies Program is more than an invaluable learning environment and networking resource; it is a great platform with multiple opportunities for individuals to discuss and engage with each other, while unearthing the ethereal depths of American Studies. 

Raluca-Nicoleta Rogoveanu, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and Communication Science, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania. Her long-term academic engagement with American culture started during her graduate years at the University of Bucharest. She has authored four books and published book chapters and articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings volumes. Dr. Rogoveanu participated in postdoctoral training programs in Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the United States. She is an active member of Romanian and European associations of American Studies.