Honors

The honors program in American Studies is designed for majors who are interested in doing graduate work in American Studies or in another, cognate field. Students must be especially motivated and committed to the interdisciplinary intellectual work that this concentrated, intensely focused experience demands. Students are invited by a faculty member during the spring semester of junior year to participate in the American Studies Honors Program. The course work includes two semesters of independent study in the senior year devoted to the development and completion of an honors thesis. Students submit a prospectus for their honors program by the end of the spring semester of junior year. The prospectus should describe a year-long independent study that engages approximately two different academic disciplines and a thesis that, in its final draft, will consist of at least 40 pages.

In recent years, students have completed honors theses on "The Watergate Scandal: A Resonant Narrative in American History"; The Manchurian Candidate: Mirroring and Critiquing the Shifts in Conservative and Liberal Foreign Policies of the Cold War"; "Federal Indian Law Regarding Land and Leslie Silko's Fiction"; and "Race and Urban Renewal in Allentown and Lancaster, PA."