American Studies

Professor Kim Marra leading a lecture course.

Cultural Experience

Helping students acquire a broad familiarity with the dynamics of cultural experience and explore aspects of life in the United States, such as sport, popular and fine arts, institutions, values, gender and ethnic relations, artifacts, and the everyday life of a diverse citizenry.

Students participating in a group exercise during a lecture by Professor Naomi Greyser.

American Studies is committed to the study of American culture. In our scholarship and teaching, we model interdisciplinary inquiry and stress the central role of power and struggle. We prepare students for a wide range of careers in the arts, education, and public service.

American Studies

Professional athlete kneeling during the national anthem.

Sport Studies

Course work provides students with the critical skills necessary to understand the cultural significance of sport as it relates to the media, the economy, the political system, and the educational system. A focus on the race, class, and gender differences in the sport experience is central to the major.

Sport Studies

Native and Indigenous Studies

Students examine the diversity within indigenous literatures, material culture, belief systems, languages, political and social organization, and economies. Students critically examine popular stereotypes of Native peoples, and develop a clearer understanding of the complex connections between past and present that shape the achievements, needs, and resources of Native American communities.

Native and Indigenous Studies

News and Announcements

Houlihan writes on the magic of Lost Woods Festival

Thursday, October 31, 2024

American Studies grad student Glenn Houlihan writes in Little Village about Lost Woods Festival in Cedar Falls, IA. Almost too magical to be true, Lost Woods Festival brought stellar Iowa musicians, cozy furniture and spellbinding vibes in its second year

Dominic Dongilli receives CLAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

The CLAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship is awarded annually to 10 graduate students, providing time and funding for the completion of a PhD dissertation. The fellowship provides a total of $14,000 to each student. Dominic Dongilli’s thesis “Interspecies America: Animal Lives and Reproductive Politics at the Smithsonian National Zoo” examines encounters between human and nonhuman animals at the Smithsonian National Zoo, arguing that zoos mediate U.S. identities, cultures, and environmental futures in which humans and nonhuman bodies interact.

Steve Warren wins the Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research Award

Friday, April 5, 2024

Stephen Warren, professor of history and American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), received the Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research Award. The award recognizes an individual faculty member who has put addressing public needs and direct engagement with the public, in the service of improving quality of life through research, at the forefront of his or her academic activities.

The Department of American Studies acknowledges the university’s origins in land grants from the Ioway, Sioux and Pottowottami, Ho-Chunk, Meskwaki and Sauk peoples; we acknowledge that, like almost all property in the United States, university land has been obtained or extracted from indigenous people. While recognizing that these origins cannot change the past, the Department works to create a future where the past is thoroughly understood in support of human flourishing, democratic values, ethical action and social justice.

The University of Iowa Acknowledgement of Land and Sovereignty represents an official and public recognition that the institutions where we work and learn today are built on Native lands.

Cultural Experience