A Movement in the Mirror:
American Studies in the 1970s

This is the World Wide Web version of a thesis completed by Lisa Guernsey in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master's of Arts in English with a concentration in American Studies at the University of Virginia, August 1995.
 The first third of this document includes an original essay reporting on the intellectual and institutional changes of the American Studies movement in the 1970s,  the second third provides an archive of presidential addresses on the history of the movement, and the final third includes links to American Studies homepages around the country.
 If you have any questions or comments about this thesis, please feel free to write me, Lisa Guernsey at LGGuernsey@aol.com. 

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. Chapter One: The Movement

The New Diversity of the 1970s
The Postmodern Stroke
The Culturological Shift

III. Chapter Two: The Institution

Unavoidable Politics
Agents of Change
The Bibliography Issues

IV. Conclusion

V. Endnotes

VI. Bibliography

VII. In Appreciation

Recent American Studies Presidential Addresses

The following essays provide an inside look at today's discussions of American Studies and its past. Each has been reprinted with permission from Johns Hopkins University Press and will be available on this homepage until August 1996.

1. Allen F. Davis, The Politics of American Studies (1990)
2. Alice Kessler-Harris, Cultural Locations: Positioning American Studies in the Great Debate (1992)
3. Cathy N. Davidson, "Loose Change": Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 4, 1993 (1994)

American Studies Homepages

American Studies@Virginia

The American Studies homepage at the University of Virginia, home to this thesis

American Studies at Yale

Maintained by graduate student David Phillips, independent of Yale University

American Studies at the University of Texas

A brief profile of UT-Austin's American Studies program

Constructed by the American Studies Working Group at Berkeley

Offers explanations and lists of resources compiled by the American Studies program at the University of Maryland

Archives of discussions posted on the H-AMSTDY newsgroup, as well as copies of the American Studies Newsletter

Special thanks to my thesis director and advisor, Prof. Alan Howard, and my second advisor, Prof. Samuel Kellams.