Program Description
Admission |
Course Requirements | Other
Requirements
Comprehensive Examinations | Progress
Towards the Degree
Admission to Candidacy | Dissertation
| Graduation
Research and teaching in the Department of American Studies at the University
of Maryland, College Park are centered around two principle intellectual
themes at the forefront of the field: the cultures of everyday life; and
cultural constructions of difference and identity. These themes recur
in our established methodologically-based areas of ethnography, literature
and society, material culture, popular culture and media studies, and
social policy history. The Department is also distinguished by its use
of information technologies in teaching and research.
The Department seeks to promote understanding of the
complex nature of American life and culture through examining how individual
experience intersects with local, national, and global contexts. In investigating
issues such as identity, difference, representation, power, and cultural
and historical change, the Department encourages the study of national,
regional, and local communities, and supports research focused within
both contemporary and historical contexts.
The Department offers students the opportunity to apply
American Studies theory and method to their own areas of research, while
encouraging them to draw on the approaches of related disciplines in order
to inform and enrich their work. In addition to ten American Studies Department
faculty, the Department also provides students with access to a network
of four Core Affiliate faculty and approximately seventy Affiliate Faculty
from departments such as Afro-American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture,
English, History, Sociology, and Women’s Studies. Regular Departmental,
Core Affiliate and Affiliate faculty members are all eligible to direct
dissertations and theses and to serve as advisors to graduate students
in American Studies.
Our connections with a wide variety of faculty from
departments across campus offer American Studies students a chance to
take part in projects such as the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
(CRGE) or the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH),
attend joint-sponsored lecture series and polyseminars, and engage in
a dialogue with the broader community of Americanists on campus. The American
Studies Department also offers students the opportunity to receive certificates
in programs such as Historic Preservation, Museum Scholarship and Material
Culture, and Women's Studies. Students can also make use of the extensive
resources housed in the Smithsonian Institution,
the National Archives,
the Library of Congress, and other Washington-Baltimore
area museums, libraries, and government agencies.
The Department is committed to supporting excellence
and originality in scholarly research. It also seeks to foster community
and professional relationships, and encourage regional and national scholarly
exchange through student and faculty participation in conferences, projects,
and workshops, and through the publication of scholarly work.
Graduate students enter the program with a variety of
skills, research interests, backgrounds, and professional experience.
Whether focused on careers in the academy, advocacy and public policy,
government, media, or cultural resource management, students find in the
Department a community of scholars engaged with teaching and research,
and resources designed to complement their specific interests and goals
and to develop their academic skills.
Admission
Applicants to the PhD program must have a Bachelor's
or Master's degree appropriate to advanced interdisciplinary graduate
study, show evidence of wide knowledge of American life and thought, and
have an interest in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of American
culture and society. Many students accepted into the doctoral program
have received BA or MA degrees in American Studies. The admissions committee
will also consider individuals with degrees in such fields as Anthropology,
Art History, English, Government and Politics, History, Journalism, Psychology,
and Sociology, if they have had a strong emphasis in American materials.
Applicants must submit an application for admission; three letters of
recommendation from professors familiar with their previous work; official
transcripts of all graduate and undergraduate education; results of the
Graduate Record Examination; a statement of purpose; and a writing sample.
Applicants may wish to visit the Department for an interview and to meet
members of the faculty and graduate students.
Course Requirements
Doctoral students entering the program with a Master's
degree take a minimum of 30 hours (beyond the Master's degree), consisting
of courses in American Studies and related disciplines, and a minimum
of 12 hours of AMST 899 (Doctoral Dissertation Research). In certain cases,
students may petition to receive up to six hours of credit for recently
completed MA work that contributes directly to the doctoral program. In
addition, in exceptional cases, the faculty may waive certain credit hour
requirements for students with prior relevant MA work.
Doctoral students entering the program with a Bachelor's
degree take a minimum of 42 hours, consisting of courses in American Studies
and related disciplines, plus a minimum of 12 hours of AMST 899 (Doctoral
Dissertation Research).
In consultation with a faculty advisor, students develop
individual programs of study consisting of courses in American Studies
and related fields such as Anthropology, Architecture, Art History, Journalism,
English, Government and Politics, History, Sociology, or Women's Studies.
Students should design their programs focused on American Studies course
work and two areas of concentration, at least one of which must be in
either (a) one of the two intellectual themes of cultures of everyday
life and cultural constructions of difference and identity, or (b) one
of the methodologically-based areas of ethnography, literature and society,
material culture, popular culture and media studies, and social policy
history. Students are responsible for determining prerequisites for advanced
courses in the above departments, for inquiring about independent studies
in area s not specifically covered in available courses, and for meeting
with a faculty advisor to determine the applicability of particular courses.
Individual courses of study are developed within the following guidelines:
1) Theory and Methodology: AMST 601, Introductory Seminar
in American
Studies* (3 hours); AMST 603 (Current Approaches in American Studies),
plus one of the following:
- AMST639A or B: Decorative Arts in American Civilization
(Students in material culture or historical archaeology may substitute
HISP 678: Fieldwork in Historic Preservation, HISP 679: Measured Drawings
for Historic Preservation, ANTH 611: Management and Cultural Process,
ANTH 689R: Method and Theory in Archaeology, or URSP 605: Planning and
Theory)
- ANTH 606: Methods of Cultural Analysis I
- CMLT 600: Introduction to Critical Theory
- COMM 711: Historical Critical Methods in Communication
Research
- ENGL 601: Bibliography and Methods
- ENGL602: Critical Theory and Literary Criticism
- GVPT 700: Scope and Methods of Political Science
- HIST 600: Historiography
- HIST 602: General Seminar: American History
- JOUR 600: Research Methods in Mass Communication
- SOCY 621: Contemporary Sociological Theory
- WMST 601: Advanced Feminist Theory
- WMST 602: Advanced Feminist Theory II
*Note: Students are expected to register for AMST 601 in their first semester
of residence.
2) American Studies seminars: 9 semester hours chosen
from special topic
seminars, AMST 628 and AMST 629, or other AMST proseminars or research
seminars taught on campus by regular AMST faculty. This includes AMST
602, 603, 6xx (Popular Culture), and 650 (formerly AMST 628Q), AMST 801
and 851 (formerly AMST 629L). Students may on rare occasions and with
their advisor’s consent petition the Director of Graduate Studies
to use one course taught by an affiliate faculty member that is cross-listed
under AMST 628 or 629 in partial fulfillment of this requirement.
3) The remaining hours of course work develop two areas
of concentration.
Normally these will be the fields in which the student is preparing for
the comprehensive examinations and dissertation research.
Other Requirements
1) The Dissertation Committee. After the first year
of residency or its equivalent, the student should meet with his or her
advisor to discuss selection of a dissertation topic and the makeup of
the dissertation committee, consisting of five faculty members from American
Studies and related departments. The dissertation director will be a member
of the Department, Core Affiliate, or Affiliate Faculty. In addition,
one committee member must serve as the Graduate School representative
and cannot be a regular American Studies faculty member.
2) Methodological Skills and Tools of Scholarship. Members
of the dissertation committee will also be called upon to approve a student's
choice of methodological skills. A doctoral candidate must provide evidence,
either by passing a special examination or designated courses in a relevant
department, that he or she can successfully employ research methodologies
or analytical tools appropriate to the area of concentration and dissertation
project. These scholarly skills may be drawn from, but are not limited
to, areas such as the following: a foreign language, statistics, content
analysis, field work techniques, or other such skills as the faculty shall
agree to accept.
Comprehensive Examinations
Students are required to take three comprehensive examinations.
One exam will be in American Studies history, theory and method. The others
will be taken in two areas of concentration supporting the student’s
interdisciplinary research. Exams administered by American Studies faculty
are 72-hour take-home written exams, but exams administered by faculty
outside the department will follow the format that department typically
uses (i.e., an oral slide exam in architectural history). Students are
strongly encouraged to schedule and take their exams as soon after completing
18 credit hours as they are prepared for them. The exams need not be taken
in any particular order but all three should be completed within a 12-month
period.
Examination fields:
1. The history, theory and method of American Studies:
An examination that
includes but extends beyond material presented in AMST 601 and AMST
603.
2. First Area of Concentration: (Choose either A or
B)
A. A topic drawn from one of the thematic areas of
the cultures of everyday life or cultural constructions of difference
and identity
B. One of the methodologically-based areas of ethnography, literature
& society, material culture, popular culture/media studies, or social
policy history
3. Second Area of Concentration: This area may be selected
from any of the areas listed above or may focus on another area drawn
from a student's work in affiliated departments.
Progress Toward the Degree:
Students are expected to make steady progress in their
degree programs. The time needed, of course, will depend on whether the
student is full-time or part-time. To insure that students proceed at
a pace appropriate to their circumstances, the faculty meets at the end
of each spring semester to conduct a review of all students in the program.
Prior to that review, students must submit a brief statement describing
their progress during that academic year, a plan for the next year's work,
and a c.v. These statements play a role in faculty decisions regarding
the granting and renewing of graduate assistantships and requests for
extensions of time limits for the degree. Doctoral students have up to
five years to achieve candidacy, and up to four years after admission
to candidacy to complete all dissertation requirements. On average, however,
full-time doctoral students in American Studies complete all requirements,
including the dissertation, in seven years.
Admission to Candidacy:
Students are admitted to doctoral candidacy when they
have satisfactorily completed all course work, passed three comprehensive
examinations, and successfully defended their dissertation proposal in
a meeting with their committee members. The dissertation proposal is developed
in consultation with the student's dissertation chair; it details the
subject of the dissertation, reviews the relevant scholarly background,
and describes the resources to be used in conducting the research. Students
must submit a completed application for admission to candidacy, including
the naming of committee members, once the above requirements are met.
See also Guidelines for Developing
a Dissertation Prospectus.
The Dissertation:
Following admission to candidacy, the student undertakes
a substantial project of independent, original, and interdisciplinary
scholarly research. Students must be continuously registered for at least
one credit of AMST 899: Dissertation Research while completing the dissertation.
Before a completed dissertation can be formally approved,
the candidate must successfully defend it in an oral examination before
the dissertation committee. Reading copies of the dissertation must be
distributed to members of the committee at least ten working days prior
to the oral examination and must conform to the University requirements
set forth in the Thesis Manual. (Students should purchase a copy of this
manual from the Media Express/Campus Reprographics, Reckord Armory.) Two
copies of the completed dissertation are submitted to the Office of Graduate
Studies and one to the American Studies Department for its records.
Procedures for Graduation:
No later than the first week of their final semester,
students should consult with the Director of Graduate Studies about the
forms to be filed with the Office of Graduate Studies and Research in
order to receive their degrees. These forms are available online at http://www.gradschool.umd.edu
or in the Department Office from the secretary, Valerie Brown.
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