PhD in American Studies

American Studies takes a multidisciplinary approach to the United States and the wider Americas. Doctoral research attends to change over time, to the interplay between political structures and cultural creativity, and to the global contexts that shape the American experience. Students consider how identities and subcultures form and transform across generations. Central themes include inequality, empire and the shifting boundaries of race. The department backs researchers from communities that have long been marginalized and values scholarship that stays answerable to those communities. Doctoral candidates work independently, reach varied audiences and pursue new approaches to both old and emerging questions about the American past and present. Their research often draws on archives, oral histories and multilingual sources, and it engages public debates about the nation's past and future.