Required Coursework
Coursework is concentrated in the student’s first two years and serves as the basis for completing the Disciplinary Spine and Cross-Cultural requirements (see below).
In the first year, students are required to take three courses: AC 599 and AC 697 in the fall term; and AC 698 in the winter. A one-credit mini course, American Culture 599 (“Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research”) serves as an introduction to resources and techniques for interdisciplinary research at the University of Michigan. Typically, this course will include guidance on Ph.D. requirements and procedures, UM libraries and archival resources, and faculty resources within the American Culture Program. American Culture 697 (“Histories and Theories of American Studies”) provides an introduction to the evolution of American Studies as field, exposure to a wide range of current theoretical approaches, and an opportunity (at the end of the term) to write a prospectus for an independent research paper in AC 698. Typically, this course will be team-taught by a pair of AC faculty with different methodological orientations. American Culture 698 (“Research Methods and Independent Writing”) is designed to assist first-year students in making the transition from histories and theories of American studies to individual research—i.e. your own work. The larger goal is a substantial research paper based on primary sources that is to be completed by the end of the first year. Students are not expected to have a fixed or finished sense of their long-term research plans at that point, and each student will define the program of research in his/her own way. Above all, AC 698 seeks to help each student begin the process of finding an independent voice as an interdisciplinary scholar and academic writer. Typically, this course will include staggered deadlines throughout the semester for revised prospectuses, bibliographies, and rough drafts, as well as some form of peer review.
Students also take, at some point during the first two years, at least one American Culture graduate course focusing on a specific period, region, community, or issue (or comparing several). This requirement is often met with interdisciplinary courses offered within AC (such as AC 699).
An additional required course, American Culture 850 (Advanced Research Colloquium), is designed to support a number of different writing and professionalizing goals such as: organizing and writing the dissertation, preparing for Doctoral Field Examinations, preparing a Dissertation Prospectus, developing individual dissertation chapters, drafting conference papers, articles, and job talks. AC 850 can be taken more than once.
Electives
Reserving a large number of courses for elective study is essential to the flexibility of the program. Courses outside American Culture offerings, chosen in consultation with faculty advisors, should include a disciplinary spine as well as a range of courses exploring specific topics of interest to the student, and in some cases a secondary disciplinary or interdisciplinary competence. Because of the highly individualized nature of students’ programs (as well as the impossibility of guaranteeing the availability of the departmental offerings in any given semester), no particular disciplinary courses are required of any student.
Elective credits during the first two years may include a small number of independent reading courses, designed in consultation with individual faculty. But in most cases, students should not take more than one independent reading course in a single semester. Participation in group discussion around the seminar table is a crucial part of the AC graduate experience and serves to facilitate a broad exchange of ideas across our multiple fields if interest.
Summer Reading List
All first year students are required to read the following books throughout the spring and summer after their first year in the Program. By Sept. 1, you will submit three documents to your Faculty Advisor: (1) a brief annotated bibliography for all the titles on the list and, (2) two 3-5 pages-long reviews of two books of your choice.
Arab American Studies
Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Three Leaves Press, 2005).
Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
Michael Suleiman, ed., Arabs in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000).
Latino/a Studies
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987).
Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
David Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkley: Unviersity of California Press, 1995).
Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996).
Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University, 2005).
Noenoe Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
African American Studies
Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consiousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Robin Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1996).
Native American Studies
Vine Deloria, Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (MacMillan, 1969).
Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes (Cambridge, 1991).
David E. Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice (Texas, 1997).
General American Studies
Nina Baym, Feminism and American Literary History (Picataway: Rutgers University Press, 1992).
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books 1994).
Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Belknap Press, 1956
Mentoring
No aspect of a student’s graduate experience is potentially more important than their mentoring experience. Graduate training has traditionally been thought of as an intellectual apprenticeship with the student receiving on-going advice and counseling from a series of faculty members concerning a broad spectrum of intellectual and professional issues. Mentoring is critical to the student’s learning process—as it is to the student’s timely progress through our graduate program. (Rackham stresses this point in their advice to graduate programs.) It is critical that students and faculty alike recognize the importance of a successful mentoring experience.
The Faculty Mentor
To secure the success of our mentoring program, we instigated a new system in the Fall semester 2001, in large part in response to urgings from our graduate students. Under the new system, all graduate students are assigned a faculty mentor upon entering the Program. To the extent possible, faculty mentors are chosen from the Program’s budgeted faculty, to ensure that the mentor is aware of the Program’s requirements. It is equally important that budgeted faculty will be counseled in their responsibilities as faculty mentors.
Language Requirements
There is no formal language requirement for the Ph.D. degree in our Program. Appropriate language study, however, is strongly encouraged. For example, it is to the advantage of students interested in Latin American and Latino culture to know Spanish well, or of students interested in nineteenth-century intellectual history to know French and/or German. University of Michigan offers numerous language programs and fellowships to support language study in Ann Arbor and abroad that we encourage our students to pursue.
Cross-Cultural Requirement
Diversity lies at the heart of the American experience. From the beginnings of human settlement, through European conquests to the present, tribal, racial, ethnic, religious, sexual and gender heterogeneity have characterized life in the United States. And if heterogeneity and diversity are American hallmarks, so too is transnationality. The experience of having two or more ‘national’ identities has been far more common than myths of the ‘American melting pot’ or official immigration policies have admitted.
The Program curriculum requires that both diversity and transnationality be addressed in each student's studies. By diversity we mean multicultural and other forms of difference including race, gender, and sexuality. We define transnationality as the critique and the investigation of social, political, economic, and cultural forces, be they inter- or cross-national.
During the second year of graduate study, students will prepare, in consultation with their faculty advisors, a statement of at least 1000 words explaining the role of diversity and transnationality in their course of study to date. The statement must be approved by the Graduate Director or by another faculty member charged with this responsibility. Usually three courses on related topics will be proposed as the center of the work for the requirement. Typically one course might focus on a non-dominant racial or ethnic population within the United States, one on gender and sexual diversity, and one on transnational cultures and histories within and/or outside of the United States. Comparative course work or independent readings may also be used as part of the requirement. If no available courses address the interests of the student, independent research culminating in a substantial research paper may be substituted. Course work used to fulfill other requirements can also fulfill the diversity and transnationality requirement, with the exception of the required first-year courses (AC 697, AC 698 and 599). Students have to satisfy this and all other course requirements by the end of their second year.
The Disciplinary Spine
There are strong intellectual and practical reasons for ensuring the students are demonstrably qualified not only in American Studies, but also in a discipline that they find central to their project and that will make them legible on the job market in the future. Our curriculum therefore seeks to encourage systematic knowledge of the fields that intersect with American Studies. The recommendations that follow are suggestions to be modified as needed. Each student’s pattern of interests is individual; each has previously studied some topics and not others, and clearly coursework undertaken in this program must mesh with that preparation.
Common disciplinary spines include History, English, Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology, but the program also supports spines based in cross-disciplinary methodologies such as Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, or Film/Video Studies. Ultimately, each student needs to weigh a number of factors in choosing a spine. It is important to note, for example, that traditional disciplines continue to generate the largest number of tenure-track teaching jobs, so there is a certain (practical) logic to constructing a curricular path that combines interdisciplinary stretching with training in a traditional discipline. The Graduate Director and your assigned faculty mentor can help you think through the range of relevant issues.
The following examples suggest typical strategies for building a spine.
A disciplinary spine in History will consist of at least 4 courses—more, if appropriate offerings are available. This work should include a number of elements:
- A general introduction to the literature of U.S. history (e.g. History 611).
- A readings course in the student’s area of interest as well as a research seminar that allows for the development of an individual project within that area.
- A fourth course in History that adds methodological breadth and/or the possibility of a second research project.
Students who expect to seek jobs in an English Department should include both literary/cultural theory and American literature in a disciplinary spine of at least 4 courses. In each case, some sense of the range of the field and some specialization is desirable. Also, unless the student already has preparation in English literature or world literature in English, at least one additional course should range outside the United States. A typical English spine might include:
- A pro-seminar on American literature or theory
- American literature courses that offer broad looks at periods, genres, or theoretical approaches.
- More specialized courses, particularly courses that offer opportunities for individualized research
Students in this area should seek to become articulate about how they would teach introductory courses in American literature, as well as how American Studies approaches contribute to literary scholarship.
Finally, a very large number of AC students work in at least one interdiscipline in addition to American Studies. African-American Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies each have a distinct history and a particular configuration of disciplinary affiliations. Students working in those fields should seek guidance from faculty members and advanced students about qualifying themselves for jobs in their particular area. The Women’s Studies Program, Film/Video Program, and Museum Studies Program certificates provide clear structures for students who wish to obtain interdisciplinary credentials in addition to a Ph.D. in American Culture.
Work on the disciplinary spine usually continues after candidacy and the disciplinary range of committees supervising the student’s work can be considered a part of it. The composition of the dissertation committee is particularly important for students whose central interests lie outside of History and English. Every effort should be made to ensure sufficient representation of the discipline (or interdiscipline) in which a job will be sought, and the chair should be chosen from that field. Teaching experience in a discipline is also important, and should be considered an integral part of each student’s academic program.
Advancement to Candidacy
The American Culture program has adopted a two-step process for advancement to candidacy. Step 1 is a formal “Progress Review” of previous coursework and distribution requirements. Step 2 is a “Second-Year Advisory Meeting” with three faculty mentors to discuss a sample of the student’s writing, identify possible gaps in the student’s training, and begin planning for the field exams in year three. Please note that students may not advance to candidacy until all “incomplete” grades have been removed (see AC incomplete policy below). Students are strongly encouraged to resolve any incompletes from their first three semesters before the Progress Review takes place in January of semester four.
Step One: The Progress Review
In the fourth semester, each student will be asked to complete a formal review of his/her progress in the program. To initiate the review, the student will submit a coursework questionnaire in January. This questionnaire will consist of four parts: a.) a list of courses intended to fulfill the disciplinary spine and cross-cultural requirements b.) a statement of intellectual focus (approximately 1000 words) explaining the student’s intellectual development and curricular choices c.) a cross-cultural statement explaining how the student’s coursework has emphasized diversity and transnational perspectives d.) a written explanation of any previous coursework problems (e.g. incompletes). Faculty members who have worked with the student will then be asked to read the entire questionnaire (and accompanying statements); evaluate the student’s performance; and decide whether to “highly recommend,” “recommend,” or “not recommend” continuation in the program. We expect that at least two professors with whom the student has done work during the first three semesters will “highly recommend” advancement to candidacy. In addition, at least one professor must agree to chair the student’s field exam committee. If these requirements are not met, the AC faculty as a whole will discuss the case in a closed department meeting and vote on whether or not to recommend continuation in the program. The faculty makes the final decision collectively. If the decision is favorable, the program recommends that the student continue work for the Ph.D. If it is not, the student is required to discontinue graduate study in the program. In some instances, the program may choose to postpone a final decision until more information is available. Typically, postponed cases will be reconsidered in the fifth semester. This grace period provides an opportunity for the student to address major problems and solicit positive faculty recommendations. Above all, we want to encourage students and faculty to take action in these circumstances and address lingering problems as quickly as possible. Appeal procedure: the program will receive an appeal regarding an unfavorable decision if the student, in a written appeal to the Program Director, presents evidence of circumstances relevant to the decision that appear to have been overlooked or misrepresented in the student’s questionnaire. An appeal must normally be submitted within two weeks of the faculty vote.
Step Two: Second-Year Advisory Meeting
The Second-Year Advisory Meeting, which follows successful completion of the Progress Review, is designed to facilitate a more focused discussion of the student’s individual work and emerging research interests with three faculty mentors. Normally, the advisory meeting should be scheduled in February or March of semester four (Winter semester of the second year), and the student should submit a sample of his/her best written work (e.g. an outstanding seminar paper) to the advisory committee at least two weeks prior to the meeting date, so that each committee member has ample opportunity to read the work and prepare comments. Rackham rules require two faculty members from the “home department” to serve on the committee that determines student candidacy. In other words, at least 2 out of 3 members of the Second-Year Advisory Committee must come from the AC Budgeted Faculty.
Process:
The meeting is moderated by the Chair and begins with welcomes, distribution of handouts, and then the student is asked to step outside, so that the Advisory Committee Members can confer.
Once the student returns, a discussion of the submitted documents begins. If the student desires, s/he can open that discussion with a brief statement concerning his or her goals for the meeting.
At the end of the meeting the student is asked to step outside again, so that the Advisory Committee Members can confer and fill out the evaluation form; when the Student returns, they and the Student sign the 2nd -Year Advisory Meeting Form
Discussion should include the following:
Locating and defining the student’s disciplinary “spine”/”nest”
Progress in the program so far (any incomplete grades must be addressed)
Refining the focus, titles, and goals of the Field Examinations reading lists
Advice on the process of studying for the Field Examinations
Division of labor in terms of advising during the preparation time
Answers to any questions the student may have
This advisory meeting also serves as a crucial opportunity to finalize assembling a Doctoral Field Examinations Committee and the three required reading lists before the summer break. Students and faculty will talk about a specific division of labor within their emerging field exam committee, and they will coordinate individual reading lists.
Students should come away from the second-year advisory meeting with a clear sense of the following:
Faculty responses to their coursework trajectory and writing sample
Any lingering methodological gaps that need to be addressed before the exams and dissertation stage
Any coursework issues (in rare cases, any outstanding incomplete grades)
Who will serve on the student’s Field Examinations committee in year three
A division of labor between the exam fields and clear final titles for each list
A clear sense of their disciplinary spine/”nest” vis-à-vis their “teaching” list
The student is recommended for candidacy to the Graduate School by the program after successful completion of all of the above requirements. The deadline for submitting candidacy applications each term is approximately one month before the last day of classes in the term preceding the term for which candidacy status is requested. When candidacy status is approved, the registrar will change all 990 enrollments to 995 for the student and tuition is reassessed at the candidacy rate. Any other course changes would require an official drop/add form initiated by the student.
[*It is important to note that the change from pre-candidacy to candidacy may impact a student’s financial aid package (i.e. a student may experience a reduction in loan awards, or have to repay some portion of loan monies received that term). Students who have loans based on out-of-state tuition assessment, the year in which they attain candidacy, should contact the Office of Financial Aid for more information.]
