Letters: US studies a vital interest
To attribute the decline in applications for undergraduate American studies degrees and the closure of departments to "a groundswell of anti-American feeling" (A degree in bullying and self-interest?, August 25) is to link one set of events to a larger phenomenon with no evidence of a causal relationship. For half a century students have held widely diverse opinions about the US, while studying that nation: I was one of many students who protested against US missiles on British shores, while reading American studies a quarter-century ago.
The apparent decline has more to do with changes in higher education than shifting opinions about US policies. American studies has often been taught by volunteers, undertaking additional teaching outside their home departments. But retirements and the loss of teaching staff, plus increasing teaching and administrative loads have made several of these programmes unviable: one that has closed recently lost a large majority of its teaching staff over the last decade.
In addition, the rising cost of a degree has adversely affected recruitment for courses that often include an addi tional year at a US university. At the postgraduate level, however, American studies is thriving throughout the UK.
The same edition of the Guardian covered the Republican convention in New York, Brooklyn's Red Hook Justice Centre, Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and even the possible acquisition of Glenmorangie by Jack Daniels. The US remains of vital interest to us all and our students acknowledge this. Let 's not indulge in America-bashing while neglecting the problems facing British students and universities.
Prof Simon Newman
University of Glasgow, and chair, British Association for American Studies
Polly Toynbee says "between the American ideal and the American reality falls the longest shadow. Discuss." I do, week in and week out, with inquisitive American studies students. I would have hoped that concern about the neocons' global impact would lead more people to study US culture; there they would encounter Americans, past and present, standing firm against rightwing hegemony.
I'd suggest Frederick Douglass's The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro speech of 1852 as a starter: "There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour": and that's just warming-up.
Dr Keith Hughes
Edinburgh University
The drop in applications has more to do with top-up fees and the cost of a degree (often four years, with one spent in the US) and the reluctance of some universities to support area studies. As for the supposed hostility to the US, undergraduate applications to my department rose every year between 1997 and 2003. Our staff and students have a wide variety of perspectives and make valuable contributions to scholarship on US literature, history, media, and culture, as well as US foreign policy.
Prof Scott Lucas
University of Birmingham
The fact is that students no longer get a year-long, local authority-funded excursion to the US. Fund that again, and students will come back.
Stuart Tegg
(American studies BA 1990), Ashford, Kent
A year in America can be expensive, but if our attitude to the US is hostile, then going there to understand a bit more about the the country is surely a good thing. It would be a shame if cost got in the way of cultural exchanges.
Phil Chamberlain
Colerne, Wilts
In the light of the US government's divisive global strategies, there has never been a better time for studying how a nation has achieved its pre-eminence and how its influence can be resisted.
Andrew Neal
Chorley, Lancs