What is American Studies?

The American Studies community is committed to the kind of scholarship that intervenes constructively in public life. Among our faculty and students are many who have changed the world in ways large and small—whether exposing injustices against Native Hawaiians, challenging the prison system, reforming the education budget, creating public art and performances or preserving precious historical sites. It’s our hope that, for you too, what you learn in the classroom can move the world. And vice versa—your vision of the world will inform and enliven what you as a student bring to the classroom.

American Studies is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the diverse histories, cultures, institutions, and peoples of the United States and its territories in transnational context. University of Hawaiʻi’s unique location in the Pacific supports areas of special expertise in Indigenous Studies and U.S. relations with Asia and Pacific. Many American Studies scholars explore the workings of power through the lens of race, ethnicity, sexuality, region, class, immigration status, and gender as they think beyond the boundaries of the nation state, examining the United States in interaction with broader regional, oceanic, and global systems.