American studies at Tehran University is quite new. Now it is the third year of the program in this university. It involves most of the aspects of American studies. I myself knew some about it, since a friend of mine started this course a year ago. The institute of North American and European Studies is a newly built building. I find it here a very friendly atmosphere, knowledgeable and helpful professors and hardworking students. I call the Head of the institute and our history professor, the Founding Fathers of the institute who do their best despite the difficulties to provide the best of everything for the institute and students. They had important roles to make such institute. Here everyone is ready to help the others. They ask the students to work hard and the students are really busy with their researches and studies, but you see smiles on faces. I have learned a lot since the beginning of the term. There are not fanatic ideas as some may think due to the problems between Iran and America; everything is studied academically which is very important to produce trustworthy and true science.
As I study more, I just feel sorry to see so many misunderstandings about Iran and Islam across the world and especially the United States. I see what a common man knows in Iran about America is much more than what is known about Iran in the United States. Sometimes, even the elites do not try to get what is right to avoid the foolish opinions or beliefs. There are simple rules to be sure and stop misunderstandings.
I remember what I read somewhere about a false thought which was believed in Aristotle's time. Aristotle was a famous philosopher, but he just like the other people in his time believed that women had fewer teeth than men. If he had only asked a lady to open her mouth and had counted her teeth, he would not have made such a mistake. He did not do that because he was sure he knew it. Now in the third millennium and the age of technology and information there are many mistakes and errors that can be prevented easily. Of course a lot of false information is released on purpose, by countries and organizations which causes doubts, but that is the responsibility of elites to experience, observe, ask and try the ways to be sure, rather than believe what they hear.
American studies is the study of the United States dealing with its history, culture, economy, literature, art, media, film, human rights and whatever which is related to the united States, either domestic or universal. Today, American studies is a big part of world study, since the United States has a lot of influences and effects across the world. Here at Tehran University most of the mentioned aspects are studied.
Some believe American Studies is the study of American civilization which relates to the United States culture and people. It is an interdisciplinary field with main focus on America.
Vernon Louis Parrington is known as the founder of American studies. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his Main Currents in American Thought which has both methodologies of literary criticism and historical research. It reads in the introduction to Main Currents in American Thought:
"I have undertaken to give some account of the genesis and development in American letters of certain germinal ideas that have come to be reckoned traditionally American--how they came into being here, how they were opposed, and what influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope of our characteristic ideals and institutions. In pursuing such a task, I have chosen to follow the broad path of our political, economic, and social development, rather than the narrower belletristic."
The "broad path" that Parrington describes set an academic precedent for what is called today, American studies. The broad path made a scholastic course of study after Harvard's interdisciplinary program in "History and American Civilization" in 1940.
There are different approaches to American studies; one of them is "myth and symbol" which claimed to get specific recurring themes in American texts trying to illuminate a unique American culture. The word exceptionalism is applied to express the uniqueness of America as well. It followed by criticism across the world that American exceptionalism notes American special mission and virtue making it unique among nations. It caused more academic discussions and more people and universities' attention on the field of American studies.
Over the years the connection between American studies and other fields such as ethnic studies, gender studies, cultural studies and post-or-pre-colonial studies has been stronger. Now American studies relates to study globalization and Americanization, too.
So there are different answers to the question what American Studies is. It is generally an interdisciplinary program to study American history and experience through different aspects, elements and disciplines to analyze the multiplicity of cultures, ideas, believes, ideologies, institutions and whatever that has made this nation.
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Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, On Philosophy of Education)
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