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

Naomi Greyser talks with Charity Nebbe of Talk of Iowa about Barbie

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Associate professor Naomi Greyser, who teaches American studies and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, joins the program to discuss the role pink plays in our culture and why Barbie looms so large.

Eriz Vazquez Wins Outstanding Article Award from the Latinx Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association

Friday, June 16, 2023

The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Latinx Studies Section (LSS) Outstanding Article Award was awarded to Eric Vázquez, Assistant Professor in American Studies and Latino Studies, for his article titled, "'Your Life Is One-Hundred-Percent at Risk': The Caravan of the Mutilated and the Internationalism of the Vulnerable."

PhD candidate Dongilli accepted to NEH Summer Institute

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

American Studies PhD candidate Dominic Dongilli has been accepted to the NEH Summer Institute on "Willa Cather: Space, Place, Archive." The project he proposed is concerned with how "restored" prairies and re-wilded bison herds function as an archive of settler colonial frontier nostalgia.

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