Smith. “Can American Studies Develop a Method?”

Smith begins with two definitions. First, AS is “the study of American culture, past and present, as a whole;” and culture is “the way in which subjective experience is organized.” By using Mark Twain as an example, Smith demonstrates that AS focuses on the ambiguous relationship between art and culture, a culture not always defined by high works of art, but also popular work (journals, etc.) As for a methodology, one that is both literary and sociological is needed. For Smith, however, “no ready made method for American Studies is in sight,” although its purpose is to expand the boundaries of conventional methods of inquiry. It will have to be developed and defined over time by ourselves.

Marx. “American Studies A Defense of an Unscientific Method.”

The fact that AS does not have a method, according to Marx, is because we are too busy doing it. Smith stated that there was no methodology in sight. Marx argues that “it is neither possible nor desirable for American Studies to develop a method.” We are not unscientific in our methods, but humanistic. Marx goes on to discuss the differences between the empirical historian (sociologist) and the humanistic scholar of AS, in terms of method, criteria for selecting material, and the modes of analysis. Basically, most scholars rely on the judgment of others in determining what to use to study culture. Is this really understanding America? This is one of the weaknesses of AS for Marx, its “imprecise description of the general culture.”

Kuklick. “Myth and Symbol in American Studies.”

Kuklick builds his article from those of Smith and Marx. For him, symbols and myths are “products of the imagination” or “mental entities.” Yet using Rylean analysis, Kuklick concurs that ideas do not just exist in the mind, but are behaviors acted out. Symbols that appear over and over are soon transferred to our behavior (i.e. writing). This explanation was a little confusing, but Kuklick goes on to discuss what Trachtenberg calls “our culture” versus the “majority culture,” or what AS scholars sometimes think of as the “literate public” and “everyone.” For example, we use Moby-Dick to represent the entire culture of that time period. Although Smith states that AS techniques make it possible to look at the past and make it more accurate than historians, Kuklick believes we “must have clearer thinking than this.”

Attebery. “American Studies: A Not So Unscientific Method.”

Attebery looks at the personal correspondence between Smith and Marx from 1946 to 1986. “What does American studies study?” is a question that can be answered by their letters. Marx came up with a circular methodology by which you 1) isolate the theme, images, and metaphors, 2)examine how they fit into the literature, 3)look at the attitudes of the writer and 4)return to the work of art and how the research sheds new light. As to what the researcher should read, one should start with what was published. Attebery concludes that both men came to accept certain premises about AS. 1)The subject matter is the American consciousness. 2)The methodology includes interpreting artifacts in cultural context. 3)The interpreter is himself a product of history. 4)A reading of the past can be tested and validated by interdisciplinarity and 5)Literature is the best entry into how people were thinking.

Lauter. “The Literatures of America: A Comparative Discipline.”

Lauter attacks the study of “mainstream”literature because it fails to consider comparative literature in its search for a definition of a nation’s culture. The study of English is hierarchical in that is narrowly determined by the white, male culture in power. Lauter believes we must ask “Where were the blacks?” and “Where were the women?” He then goes into a fairly in-depth overview of minority writers, but basically concurs that we need to “reexamine– even suspend–our assumptions about formal hierarchy and concentrate on discovering the formal conventions that emerge from [marginalized] literatures,” i.e. oral traditions and song styles. In other words, “we need to learn about, study, be sensitive to a far broader range of audiences, conventions, functions, histories and subjects than have in general been the case in literary analysis.”