Master of American Studies

Degree Requirements

The Master of American Studies requires 30 hours of course work selected from the following list of courses and a comprehensive examination. Students are advised (and will be actively advised by the American Studies graduate director) to take a broad array of courses both with respect to department or discipline and temporally. Students may petition to have additional courses from English, History, and Politics, as well as from other departments such as Art, Classics, Economics, Theology, and Philosophy, counted toward their American Studies degree. No thesis or foreign language is required.

Courses

English Courses:

ENG 5319Postmodernism and Contemporary Literature

3

ENG 5322Menippean Satire

3

ENG 5323Modern Southern Literature

3

ENG 6333Milton

3

ENG 6336Thomas More

3

ENG 6337Pope, Swift, and Their Circle

3

ENG 6338The Age of Johnson

3

ENG 6361Faulkner

3

ENG 6362Hawthorne and Melville

3

ENG 6364Liberty in Literature

3

ENG 6369Henry James

3

ENG 6369Conrad

3

ENG 7352English Romanticism

3

ENG 7366Modern Fiction

3

History Courses, all 5300-level courses:

Check with the History Department for the correct course numbers and descriptions.  Below are a sample of courses that have been completed in the past.
HIS 5302America 1880 - 1920

3

HIS 5303American Intellectual History

3

HIS 5303The Scottish Enlightenment

3

HIS 5304Eighteenth-Century America

3

HIS 5305The Age of Jefferson

3

HIS 5305American Women's History

3

HIS 5306American Catholic History I

3

HIS 5306America since 1920

3

HIS 5306Seventeenth-Century America

3

HIS 5307American Catholic History II

3

HIS 5307The American West

3

HIS 5308The American South

3

HIS 5309

HIS 5337The Civil War

3

HIS 5339Texas History

3

HIS 5342The Jacksonian Era

3

Politics Courses:

Check with the Politics Department for the most current course numbers and descriptions for 5000 level courses.  Below are a sample of classes that have been completed in the past.
POL 530X20th Century Political Thought and Policy

POL 530XHobbes, Locke, Rousseau

POL 530XModernity and Post-Modernity

POL 530XPolitics and Parties

POL 530XProgressivism

POL 530XThe American Founding

POL 530XThe Enlightenment and Liberal Democracy

POL 6312Plutarch / Augustine / Machiavelli

3

POL 6321Lincoln

3

POL 6323Constitutional Law

3

POL 6326The Presidency

3

POL 6327Civil Rights

3

POL 6328Congress

3

POL 6377Special Studies

3

POL 7376Aristotle's Politics

3

Courses in American Studies

AMS 6351Directed Reading

1-3

AMS 6377Special Studies

3

AMS 6378Special Studies

3

AMS 6379Special Studies

3

AMS 6V99Graduate Reading - Full-time Enrollment

1-9

AMS 7095American Studies Comprehensive Exam

3

AMS 6377, AMS 6378, and AMS 6379: Courses offered according to student interest and faculty availability.