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The Field Of American Studies

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In this essay, I will examine the field of American Studies and attempt to explain its ever changing definition. I will take the reader through the origins of American Studies and describe the events that led to changes in the discipline.
The scholars in American Studies are constantly seeking to understand the practices by individuals and groups and their history of origin. Scholars struggle to understand how values and beliefs shape social and political realities within the U.S. and other countries. American Studies is an interdisciplinary study that explores cultures of the United States as well as their transnational exchanges and impact.
In the words of Staurt Hall, he “finds in American culture and in America’s capacity to live with difference the best illustration of a continuous dialect between the local and the global, between the insular and the transnational. He defines culture as an embodiment of the best that has been thought and said in a society. It is the sum of the great ideas as represented in the classic works of painting, music, and philosophy that represent culture. (Hall, 9)” Hall also has observed U.S. dominance in communication and described America as the common factor of globalization.
The field of American Studies began in what may be called a single beginning with multiple origins. The beginning of the American Studies Association in late 1951 and early 1952 and the beginning of the journal, American Quarterly at the University of Minnesota in

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