© University of Kent - Contact | Feedback | Legal
The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
American Studies MA, MPhil, PhD
This is a research programme within the American Studies subject area.
Key facts
- Subject area: American Studies
- Location: Canterbury
- School: Centre for American Studies
- Duration: MA one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees: More info
- Entry requirements: A first or upper-second class honours degree in an appropriate subject (for example, American Studies, History or English degrees with US study component). Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Outline
Members of the Centre for American Studies provide supervision in many aspects of American Studies. Supervision is team-based and reflects the active research interests of the Centre.
Programme structure
For further information see the School site.
Funding
The Christine Bolt Scholarship covers tuition fees for one year's stay in the United States and £10,000 towards research.
Applicants for a research programme can apply for a studentship in their ‘major' department (eg, English, History etc).
Every school at Kent offers one or two University postgraduate research scholarships, each available for three years, providing fees at the home/EU rate and a stipend up to £13,590 per annum (2011/12 rate).
Many schools offer scholarships in the form of Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs) whereby postgraduate research students receive financial support in return for teaching. The value of awards may vary, but often cover tuition fees at the home/EU rate and a substantial maintenance grant. All postgraduate research students are eligible to apply for GTAs. See Graduate Teaching Assistantships.
Support for external funding opportunities includes the AHRC, and BAAS travel grants.
View further information about scholarships available in the Centre for American Studies.
Further information:
Resources and facilities
American Studies benefits from excellent library resources, and is especially strong in US literature, film and history. Specialist collections include slavery and anti-slavery, a large collection of works on photography and contemporary visual communications, and a slide library with well over 100,000 classified slides. The Library also houses the British Cartoon Archive. Kent is also within easy reach of London's major library resources.
Postgraduate students have access to the resources provided by the Centre for American Studies and its related departments. The Centre runs regular research events each year. Other schools and departments such as English, Film Studies, Politics and International Relations, and History also host research seminars that students are welcome to attend.
Further information:
Research areas
Staff interests broadly fit within the parameters of American literature, American history, American film and American politics, although we actively welcome interdisciplinary projects that investigate several areas of study. Current strengths in American Studies at Kent are as follows: Native American literature and culture; African-American history; slavery and the Atlantic world; the American West; US environmental issues; US visual culture; Disney and recreation; American realist fiction; modern American poetry; US immigration politics; American science fiction; Hollywood; US foreign policy.
The American West
Kent is the only UK institution to operate a research cluster on the American West, with five members of the Centre specialising in trans-Mississippi studies. The research cluster engages in pioneering work on Native American literature, Western movies and video games, female frontiering and several other elements of the Western experience.
The Study of US Environmental Issues
US environmental history is a relatively new field of study, but of increasing importance. Our two environmental specialists work on wildlife management, nuclear protest and concepts of ecological doomsday.
The Study of Race, Ethnicity and Borders
The Centre has a long history of studying race and ethnicity. Currently, six members of the team cover a range of topics that include African-American political, cultural and social history, Native American literature, Latin American relations and immigration writing and politics.
Show all
|Staff research
LiteratureHenry Claridge: Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature
American literature, American studies; comparative literature; Theodore Dreiser, E L Doctorow, F Scott Fitzgerald; city of Chicago. Publications include F. Scott Fitzgerald: Critical Assessments (1991) and William Faulkner: Critical Assessments(1998).
Dr Will Norman: Lecturer in North American Literature
Twentieth-century American literature and culture; crime fiction; postmodernism; theories of time in relation to literature; and the critical work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Fredric Jameson.
Dr David Stirrup: Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature
Native American literature and culture; 20th-century American literature; the American midwest.
Dr Karen Jones: Senior Lecturer in American History; Director of American Studies
American West; environmental history; the wolf: science and symbolism; hunting, nature and American identity; human relationships with animals. Publications include Wolf Mountains (2002), The Invention of the Park(2005) and The American West: Competing Visions (2009).
Dr Will Pettigrew: Lecturer in American History
Slavery and the Atlantic world; 18th and 19th-century history.
Dr John Wills: Senior Lecturer in American History
The 1950s; California; cyberculture and computer games; Disney, theming and recreation; environmental protest; nuclear age; US sociology and popular culture. He is the author of Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon, California (2006) and The American West: Competing Visions (2009).
Dr Ruth Blakeley: Lecturer in International Relations
US foreign and security policy, US-Latin American relations, terrorism studies, and human rights. Published a monograph entitled: State Terrorism in the Global South: Foreign Policy, Neoliberalism and Human Rights, (2009).
Dr Andrew Wroe: Lecturer in American Politics; Lecturer in Politics and International Relations
Politics and process of direct democracy; social inclusion and exclusion; immigration and race/ethnicity. Published (with David McKay and David Houghton) Controversies in American Politics and Society (2002).
Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald: Lecturer
Hollywood cinema; film costume; gender and sexual experience; romantic comedy; Doris Day. Currently finishing Hollywood Catwalk: Reading Costume and Transformation in Mainstream Film (forthcoming).
Dr Peter Stanfield: Director of Film Studies
Cultural history of American film concentrated on and around the film criticism of Lawrence Alloway; American underground cinema of the late 1950s; the film adaptations of Mickey Spillane; pulp film and the avant-garde; ‘Baby Face Nelson' and the 1950s retro-gangster cycle. Publications include Body & Soul: Jazz and Blues in American Film, 1927-1963 (2005), and Horse Opera: The Strange History of the Singing Cowboy (2002).
Dr William Rowlandson: Lecturer in Hispanic Studies
Visual and textual representations of the Cuban Revolution and the revolutionary era. Recent publications include Reading Lezama's Paradiso (2007).
Dr Natalia Sobrevilla Perea: Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies
State formation and political culture in the Andes from the end of the colonial period throughout the 19th century; race, ethnicity and military culture in the 19th and 20th centuries in South America.
Further information:
Contact details
Admissions enquiries
T: +44 (0)1227 827272
E: information@kent.ac.uk
Subject enquiries
Dr John Wills
School of History, University of Kent,
Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NX, UK
T: +44 (0)1227 823406
E: j.wills@kent.ac.uk
Further information: