PROGRAM IN AMERICAN STUDIES

 

American Studies Announces, Professor Kathleen Belew as our next Director for 2025-2028.  Welcome Professor Belew!

Kathleen Belew (Associate Professor, History) is a lifelong pursuer of interdisciplinary scholarship, delighted to direct the American Studies Program at Northwestern. She earned a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University and an undergrad degree in Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington. This education fed her interest in story-driven research and her specialization in the history of the present.

Belew’s forthcoming book, Home at the End of the World, illuminates an era of apocalypse through a history focused on her native Colorado where, in the 1990s, high-profile kidnappings and murders, right-wing religious ideology, and a mass shooting exposed rents in America’s social fabric, and dramatically changed our relationship with place, violence, and politics (Random House).

Her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary Americaexplores how white power activists created a social movement through a common story about betrayal by the government, war, and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, the movement mobilized and carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. This movement was never adequately confronted, and remains a threat to American democracy. 

She is co-editor of and contributor to A Field Guide to White Supremacy, and has contributed essays to Myth America, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment, and Conspiracy/Theory. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.

Belew has spoken about her scholarly research on wide variety of platforms, including The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, AC 360 with Anderson Cooper, Frontline, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered. Her work has featured prominently in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us (ABC) and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis (Frontline). Her research has received the support of the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation. Belew earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2019-20), Northwestern University, and Rutgers University.

 

50 Years of American Studies - a retrospective

 

What is American Studies

The American Studies Program is an honors-track major that draws on a broad range of faculty from the humanities and social sciences. Students examine components of U.S. culture, the diverse experiences of Americans, and others affected by Americans locally, nationally, and globally. 

Read about the history of the Program from founder, Carl Smith and Director Gerry Cadava below.

https://news.weinberg.northwestern.edu/2024/09/17/american-studies-program-celebrates-its-50th-anniversary/