American Studies Learning Goals

Students who major in American Studies can expect to achieve the following learning goals:

Develop historical perspective, that is, to gain insight on how modern conditions relate to and can be better understood with deeper knowledge of the past
Identify arguments in secondary sources and evaluate their effectiveness
Formulate good research questions
Identify secondary sources that address those questions and evaluate their quality
Grasp the concept of historiography and articulate historiographical issues, patterns, and trends on chosen subjects
Find appropriate primary sources and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses
Interpret primary sources accurately
Articulate a clear thesis statement
Build an argument principally on evidence obtained through working with primary sources
Organize a large paper and sustain the argument throughout
Use Standard Written English effectively
Consistently cite and annotate information that is not common knowledge
Use proper citation form (i.e., according to the Chicago/Turabian style)
Develop and correctly construct a bibliography