This course will focus on interdisciplinarity as a method by comparing different disciplinary approaches to the study of American culture. It will introduce students to the history of American Studies as a field, to the questions explored in greater depth in the other core courses, and to contemporary intellectual debates within the field. Readings will be chosen to enable students to compare the questions asked and the methods and evidence used by scholars in the fields of social and cultural history, literary criticism, the new historicism, and cultural studies.