American Studies | www.essex.ac.uk/ussc | E admit@essex.ac.uk | T +44 (0)1206 873666 Why choose


American studies? For well over a century, the United States has been the single most influential country in the world. It has risen to be the only world ‘superpower’ and so dominates the world stage. Its commercial and cultural products are exported all over the world, from Silicon Valley and Hollywood, to jazz, blues and hip hop. The complex and ever-changing American culture, strengthened by genuinely multicultural communities, continues to fascinate. Spread across an entire continent, the cities, vast open plains, mountains and deserts shape diverse and intriguing ways of life.


American studies offers a truly multidisciplinary approach, giving students knowledge of the many ways to understand key areas of the American experience. By encouraging students to think and operate across traditional boundaries, the American studies programme at Essex has produced confident, assertive and intelligent graduates who have become successful in many professional fields.


What’s special about American studies


Miami is a favourite destination for study abroad


at Essex? Essex has been a major teaching and research institution for American studies since its foundation in 1964. In 2010, The Complete University Guide, published in The Independent, ranked American studies at Essex tenth in the UK. Our courses are built on a foundation of expertise in literature, film, history of art, history, politics and sociology, and experienced staff from these disciplines contribute to the course.


You will have freedom of choice to build up a personal expertise covering a wide range of interests – American writers and artists, cinema, native American studies, modern politics and sociology, and United States history. Study is built upon a first-year core of four modules in United States literature, history, sociology and politics. You also take a module entitled The Enlightenment. This offers a broad introduction to the Western view of the world, which was applied most extensively


72 | Undergraduate Prospectus 2012


in North America. In the second year, a multidisciplinary module, drawing on cultural trends, is the pivot of the course around which other United States modules and outside options may be chosen in accordance with your own preferences.


Will I have the opportunity to study in


Study abroad is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore and become immersed in American culture.


What can I go on to do


the United States?* In your third year, you will spend a period of study abroad at one of the American universities with whom we have an exchange agreement. We currently have exchanges with fifteen excellent academic institutions across the United States, from New Mexico to Massachusetts, including upstate New York, the Deep South, Miami and California. You will be encouraged to take modules from the vast range of choices available at your American university. During your time abroad you may also prepare a researched piece of independent study which is then completed in your final year.


with my degree? You will have learned to work both individually and in groups, have research experience and have skills in amassing, analysing and ordering information. You will have acquired essential critical abilities, as well as good facility in oral and written expression. You will, of course, have a wide-ranging knowledge of many aspects of American life and intimate acquaintance with the region in the United States where you have spent a period of study and where you will also have learned to adapt to and benefit from a different educational system.


All of this is an excellent preparation for careers in media, journalism, politics, the Civil Service, international organisations such as the UN and NATO or non-governmental organisations.


* Visa restrictions may apply


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