The English Department encourages upper-division majors with particular literary/critical interests to pursue them formally by selecting an area of specialization.

The American Cultures & Global Contexts specialization offers students an opportunity to study authors and topics drawn from a broad historical range. We also encourage students to develop a comparative understanding of the field.

In practice, this includes exploring how different aspects of American culture interact, and interrogating the ways regional, hemispheric and global trends shape, and are shaped by, American cultural expressions. Students are encouraged to consult with members of the ACGCC faculty for advice in selecting their courses.

Requirements

Students who complete any four (4) elective courses devoted to American culture will satisfy the specialization requirement.

English 10AC counts as one of the four required electives for the specialization. However, the American literature courses that satisfy requirements for the English major—English 103A and English 104A—will not count although these courses are recommended.

A senior seminar, English 197, in American Cultures & Global Contexts is advisable but not mandatory. Recent ACGCC senior seminars have featured single-author studies of Baldwin, Cather, Faulkner and Thoreau and themes such as "Power and Abjection in the Neo-Slave Narrative," "Interracial Narratives" and "Paranoid Designs."

For information or to declare the specialization, please contact Ann Wainwright, the English Department's Staff Undergraduate Advisor, at 893-4710 or by email at wainwright@english.ucsb.edu.

To subscribe, fill out our web form at LSIT or email your name and email address to the Center's Graduate Student Fellow at acgc-info[at]english.ucsb.edu.