What does America stand for? What does it mean to be an American? And subsequently, who “is” considered an American – and who is not? These are the core questions – as timely as ever – that we will seek to explore during the semester. This course will introduce students to American Studies, as both an academic discipline that we study as well as a contested idea to be debated. It surveys the increasingly broadening fields of study that fall under the rubric of American Studies – literature, history, social sciences, cinema, music and art – and teaches students ‘how to’ conduct research by applying or combining them. At heart, the course seeks to give students a “taste” of the excitingly diverse, and constantly evolving, flavors of American Studies in order to help them locate a particular area/topic/era/methodology that they might wish to pursue in a more advanced manner in their later studies.