This is a short piece I am writing for the American Studies Association of Korea, as a new member of the group. I am going to be a discussant in an upcoming academic conference dealing with the discourse of race in the aftermath of Katrina. It should be a nice way to get back on the academic wagon.
Anyway, they asked me to write something about American Studies in their newsletter. I'm gonna edit it down later, but want to submit it as a short essay-in-progress, in its full fotm. Please excuse the repetitiveness. Anyway, here goes:
The Need for a "Critical American Studies"
As an undergraduate double major in History and "American Civilization" (Brown University's name for "American Studies"), I once found myself railroaded into a conversation with an elder visiting professor from England, who had asked me what my major was.
When dutifully replying to his question, informing him that my major was "American Studies," he raised an eyebrow and smirked as he asked me, "Is that not a contradiction in terms?"
I was not amused. But I was also not confident enough to think of anything witty, sharp, or erudite to say. He also had a British accent. I just nodded nervously and mustered a weak smile.
As a teacher of US History for 2 years in two private high schools in Korea, I have constantly fought the fallacious belief that "American history is only a couple hundred years old, while Korea's is 5,000." As an experienced teacher in this subject, I am able to easily dispatch these uninformed notions of "history" as being solely defined by physical borders, rather than cultural continuity, population movements, and the exchange and preservation of concrete information. Using the former definition, South Korean history began either in 1948 or 1953, depending on your point of view. Similarly, American history is far more rich and complex a story; in the same way one cannot say Korean history began in 1948, neither did American history begin in 1787, 1776, 1620, or even 1492.
And finally, as returning lecturer in "Understanding American Culture" at 외대 and a Ph.D. candidate with several years of teaching experience at the university level back at Berkeley, I have had to adjust to the many students' initial suspicion that my course would be just be a booster for American imperialism or national superiority. Most of my students have been quite surprised to see the critical approach with which I look at the history and culture of the United States.
All of these situations give a hint to the different ways people view "American Studies" and its implicit agenda in existing at all. What lessons can America's "short" history offer the rest of the world's "older" countries? Why should we learn about America – don't we already know enough from their movies, television, and other cultural products? Isn't this just more of the same boosterism for American hegemony?
Korea, more than many other countries and cultures in the world, could greatly benefit from an American Studies approach that is inherently critical – as all good scholarship should be – and non-ideological. Given the surge in anti-American sentiment in recent years, especially among the younger generation, a critical American Studies approach is the ideal way to offer a more accurate view into the study of American culture, as it would take place within a mode of analysis that would make it clear that what would be taught would not be recycled American civics lessons or brazen braggadocio about the greatness of American ideology.
Instead, what they would be exposed to would be a mode of critical analysis that would utilize American culture and history as the content, but which the students would soon realize – by following the lead of the instructor – are conceptual tools that can be applied to any society and culture. In this way, the students will start by looking critically at American culture, but in a way that allows a reasoned, complex, and layered understanding of not only American society, but one's own, in terms of patterns of thinking, social structures, and helpful explanative frameworks.
What this requires is the teaching of an American Studies that utilizes specific, clearly defined conceptual tools and approaching the notion of "culture" and "history" within a structural framework that explains as much as it calls things into question.
For most Korean students, such a class is completely new to them, but they respond to it readily and eagerly, now taking the first chance to be critical without confusing that concept with simply being "contentious"; students do more than try to frame American society in a negative light and call this "critical" – they learn an entirely new mode of critical thinking style, one that can easily be applied to their own society.
One interesting thing about most of my lectures is that with almost every conceptual tool I apply to the American case, I usually first offer an example of how it could also apply in Korea. In this way, the connections are easier to make, and Korean students soon learn that this critical intellectual stance is universal, and become better young scholars, thinkers, and hopefully better citizens.
And given Korea's particular and uniquely close ties to the United States – for better or worse – South Korean society is difficult to understand without the close contact and deep influence of American culture, which is why American Studies should be of special interest to many Koreans, if presented properly.
Long past is the time when American Studies can be understood as mere patriotic propaganda disguised as scholarship, or a diffuse field with little focus. It should be approached as an area of study that strives to clarify and understand one of the most powerful and influential cultures in history, a country and a culture that has left an indelible imprint on every other country and culture in the world – The United States of America.
Given these facts, who could argue that American Studies is in itself not one of the most interesting and worthy fields of study that there could be? And given the present situation and orientation of young students and scholars today, now is one of the best times to present a critical American Studies approach to a population that has such a complex and contentious relationship with the both the place and concept we know as "America."
