Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ad Hoc American Studies: Michigan And The Hidden History Of A Movement, Alexander I. Olson, Frank Kelderman

Faculty Scholarship

This essay uses the history of the American Culture program at the University of Michigan as an occasion for rethinking the early years of American Studies more generally. Our archival research has found that the program was founded in 1935—seventeen years earlier than previously thought—making it the oldest American Studies degree program in the world. These forgotten years challenge conventional genealogies tracing the field’s origins to the “myth and symbol” school at Harvard. Instead, Michigan’s history reveals a deep engagement with interdisciplinary movements in the 1930s that shared an interest in critiquing American democracy, particularly human ecology, institutionalist economics, and …