American Studies :: essays papers

American StudiesAmerican Studies can be a variety of different meanings to a lot of different authors. They are only pretty much on the homogeneous note, but with different alterations. For me, I believe that it is to make connections between the past and how it will impact the future. American Studies has transformed overtime. Each individual has their own beliefs and feelings of what it really means. In ingredient Wises clause he states how he is interested in how the depicted object of American Studies has transformed overtime, what American Studies methodology is, and the types of questions that American Studies practitioners ask. I believe that in that respect is no one way to understand America. For Gene, he begins to understand America by looking into the past. On the other hand, there was similarly the Linda Kerber essay that we had also read at the beginning of the semester. Kerber was aphorism in her article that there was something that was wrong with the m yth and symbolist methodology. She also talked about how there are new costes and diversity in the field and how it has altered the ways that American Studies practitioners write, teach, and learn. What interested me most in her article is how American Studies was quicker to welcome women and ethnic studies. I believe the react to this is simply that the women represent a larger group and they are more out spoken. Kerber also saw a great deal of male chauvinism with the myth symbolist methodology, as well as this certain approach not looking for structures of power. She looked at points from all different sorts of angles and would then crush them. Kerber would always have a valid answer and would really go into great detail in her article so that it was easy to take apart up the information. These two articles were very much related, but at the same time they were very different. This leads into the past and current methodological approaches in studying American cultur e and what different authors have to say.The methodology of early American Studies practitioners in the 30s, 40s, and 50s was named the symbol myth school approach. They came up with a come of assumptions that would guide those working in the field.1. There is one homogenous see2. The American mind is distinguished by its place in the innovative World-which makes Americans idealistic, individualist, and pragmatic Europeans by contrast, were tragic in temper and corrupted by old world assumptions