The Mid-Life Crisis of American Studies

Abstract

than most disciplines, allows its practitioners the Rorschach approach. We make of it what we will, what we must; we suit it to our needs and our times. Season after season we draw it on like a new leather glove, working it to a shape which is distinctively ours. Mavericks all, we give lip service to some common definitions, agree to disagree, and doggedly follow the heart's desire. The liberated space we inhabit nurtures our optimism and inventiveness, our restless energy and irregular talents. Or so it did, until the present time. Maturity is catching up with American Studies and threatens to change its ways. Yesterday's rambunctious academic brat is today's solid establishment type. Where American Studies once served as a critic of disciplinary limitations, it now apes the disciplines in its compartmentalization and attention to canon. And the disciplines ape our former freedom. In American Studies today methodology promises to triumph over teleology. The whole is smaller than the sum of its parts; and the parts, God wot, may not even be ours but betrothed to some others. I do not intend this as an exercise in nostalgia. Immaturity is as hard on scholars and teachers as maturity is usually comfortable. Who among us does not appreciate feeling settled in and respected? And who does not recognize the advantages of an established field: the resources it affords for depth and breadth in the study of American culture? I accept our adulthood, but do not rejoice in it. For I worry about the costs of maturity, and I sense a mid-life crisis approaching. In the academic family until the midto late '60s, American Studies had Cinderella status. Then came the revolution in higher educationexpansion, democratization, innovation, social relevance and the likeand our poor chimney sweep metamorphosed overnight into Thoreau at Walden Pond: noble bard, master builder, and model teacher. We knew how to-how to be flexible, responsive, accessible, and non-elitist; how to be classic and popular, specialized and integrative, book-bound and