American Studies is organized into three subfields:
- Popular culture
- Ethnic studies
- Southern studies
This page provides brief overviews of our faculty members’ research interests. For more detailed information, including lists of publications, browse our directory.
Popular Culture
Studying popular culture means analyzing images, ideas, events, and institutions that appeal to a wide audience, including music, sports, tourism, fashion, film and TV, video games, and more.
- Professor Mike Innis-Jiménez‘s research interests include sports and leisure.
- Professor Jeff Melton‘s research interests include tourism, travel writing, road culture, and humor/satire.
- Professor Stacy Morgan‘s research interests include visual arts.
- Professor Mairin Odle‘s research focuses on Native American representations in popular culture.
- Professor Edward Tang‘s research interests include postwar societies/arts.
- Professor Eric Weisbard‘s research interests include popular music, cultural industries, media studies, criticism and theory.
Ethnic Studies
Ethnic Studies looks at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and national identity, including how minority groups and individuals define themselves, or how others define them, within historical and cultural contexts.
- Professor Mike Innis-Jiménez‘s research interests include Latinx studies, such as immigration, urban culture, foodways, labor, and sports.
- Professor Stacy Morgan‘s research interests include African American studies, such as art and literature and folklore.
- Professor Mairin Odle‘s research interests include Native American studies, such as early Euro-Native interactions and history of the body.
- Professor Edward Tang‘s research interests include Asian American studies, such as the arts, the Cold War, and transnationalism.
Southern Studies
Southern Studies scholars examine the U.S. South through its cultural forms and social interactions, as expressed through literature, arts, history, politics, rural and urban landscapes, and foodways.
- Professor Jack Carey‘s research focuses on Jim Crow segregation, race/ethnicity, and citizenship.
- Professor Jolene Hubbs’s research interests include William Faulkner, poor whites, foodways, and gender/sexuality studies.
- Professor Jeff Melton‘s research interests include Mark Twain.
- Professor Stacy Morgan‘s research interests include folk art.
- Professor Eric Weisbard‘s research interests include country music.