Coming into this event, I was presented with what seemed to be an oxymoron - “Global American Studies.” This was, frankly, a confusing name to me. How could something both be “Global” and “American?” The faculty members and guest speaker at the event seemed more than promising. Professor Sarah Gulatieri is a lauded and well-spoken-of newcomer to GU-Q’s faculty and the moderator, Professor Karine Walther is a campus icon in and of herself. Guest speaker, Professor Brian Hochman, a faculty member at Georgetown’s main campus and director of the American Studies program there, also presented an interesting background, having published work on surveillance systems and wiretapping within the United States. All this mounted to a promising set of individuals ready to educate me on something I was thoroughly unfamiliar with. With an open mind and a cautiously curious stance, I went ahead and attended the event.
Before the event began, I spoke to Professor Gulatieri to get a better idea of what the event was about and any particular thing she would like noted for this article. It was then that I was informed this event was part of a re-launching of the American Studies certificate, now renamed the Global American Studies certificate, here at GU-Q. Professor Gulatieri hoped this conversation with Professor Hochman would “spark re-ignited interest” in the certificate within the campus.
Professor Hochman began the conversation on a somewhat dark note of the current state of US politics. With the incoming Trump Administration posing “apocalyptic” threats to the field, Professor Hochman expressed his desire to preserve the field of American Studies. This was a call to action, clearly. Professor Hochman saw a dark future ahead of us, as citizens in a unipolar world surrounding America, and urged us to pursue American Studies.
The oxymoronic concern in my mind was very quickly addressed by both professors. Hochman clarified that American Studies as a field has “always been global” and Professor Gulatieri stressed that the field is not “a celebration of American nationalism.” Rather, it’s the opposite - American Studies is a field that critically examines the United States from all angles. I appreciated how she addressed the imposing position of a field called American Studies and how it could be seen as feeding into the “imperial American project” - it shows a great deal of awareness of both her field as a scholar of American Studies and the audience she was speaking to.
To my surprise, it turned out that both professors became scholars of American Studies from backgrounds outside of the field. Professor Gulatieri began her studies as a history student focusing on the Middle East and Arab-American histories. Meanwhile, Professor Hochman entered the field as someone coming from the Literary Studies field.
Both professors also expressed an appreciation for American Studies as a place where they didn’t feel like “outsiders.” Their unique approaches to their studies of the world positioned them as people on the outskirts of their fields. Professor Gulatieri spoke about how she felt more at place when speaking to her colleagues in American Studies rather than her fellow historians. Professor Hochman expressed similar sentiments.
There was a very clear and critical stance the event took towards the political history of the USA. Professor Hochman’s own background clued me in on that but I was glad to see it come to fruition with how both professors discussed the United States. The hypocrisy of the US invasion of Iraq, the history of torture and lynchings within the US, violence against marginalized people and several other horrors were brought to the forefront of the conversation in no uncertain terms. Once again, there’s an awareness of their audience here that I appreciate. Highlighting the critical aspects of American Studies was an ingenious move on the part of Professor Gulatieri and Hochman and definitely softened my cautious stance towards the field.
Much of what was spoken of during the event echoed the kind of rhetoric Professor Patricia Kahle uses in her course, Atlantic World, a class that was the highlight of my Fall semester last year. Decentralizing the 1776 “founding” of America, examining points of American history from lenses of imperialism and capitalism - several things I thoroughly enjoyed doing with Professor Kahle.
The projects that main campus students have taken within the American Studies field are wide and varied, as revealed by Professor Hochman. Students have done projects about Taylor Swift, horror films, Georgetown’s relation to slavery, the labour and labour activism, and music. Hochman said that the scope of American Studies projects is “hard to capture.” As he succinctly put it, “the students are what makes up American Studies.”
Overall, this event was about demystifying the fog surrounding American Studies as a field here at GU-Q. It was about clarifying what the field is and will continue to be. It seems that the field is a global perspective on the US and a critique of it and its history overall. It’s taking a critical eye and examining the history of the nation from multiple different points of view across time and space. I eagerly await to see how the field of American Studies, or Global American Studies, continues to evolve and how it comes to fruition here on the GU-Q campus.
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