American Studies

American Studies

American Studies is an interdisciplinary program that provides opportunities for students to study American culture, society, identity, and politics by combining coursework in a wide variety of disciplines into a single major.

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American Studies Open House

W, March 19, 4:30-6 pm Humanities 245

Come out to talk with faculty and students majoring or minoring in American Studies.  Satisfy your craving with the ever-popular Christian’s Pizza and sweet treats!  Wednesday is supposed to be sunny and warm, stop by to say hello and still have time to aim outside to watch the sun set over campus.

Image in Ferguson, MO at night with smoke by photojournalist David Carson

Carson, Famed Photojournalist -- March 26 2025

Truth, Technology, and the 2020s: Disinformation in the Age of AI

A Discussion with David Carson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Wednesday, March 26th, 5:00 pm, Jepson 118

David Carson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who is currently serving as a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. In this discussion, he will address the current political and social landscape and the impact of Generative AI technology on photojournalism and image-making in relation to issues of accuracy, authenticity, disinformation, and the representation of “truth.”

Stephen Belber and Jennifer Cavenaugh

Justice Conversation October 29 2024

Justice Takes Center Stage

A Conversation with Stephen Belber and A&S Dean Jennifer Cavenaugh

Tuesday, Oct 29, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM, Jepson 118, Jepson Hall  This event brings together two artists who have a long history of telling stories on the stage and screen that focus on issues of justice. What are effective ways to dramatize the story of a sexual assault or a murder? How do theater and film artists balance the need for their story to account for the complexities of specific crimes with the need for their stories to be entertaining for viewers?

Stephen Belber and Jennifer Cavenaugh will discuss the challenges of framing such stories for audiences. Stephen Belber is an accomplished playwright, screenwriter, and film director with national TV and stage awards.  Jennifer Cavenaugh is the Dean of the School Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond with an impressive body of scholarship. Her book, Medea’s Daughters: Forming and Performing Women Who Kill, examines representations of female criminals in plays and television. Dean Cavenaugh is also a long-established artist, having performed and directed in the theater for 30 years. 

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Mia Lazar

Student & Alumni Success

Mia Lazar (’24 graduate & alumni) with American Studies minor, traveled through the U.S. enhancing and expanding, Documerica, an environmental website. Supported by UR’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program and financial award by Virginia Humanities Rapid Grant, Lazar collaborated with Lauren Tilton, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities.  Learn more.

Alumni Accomplishments
Browder Class Museum 07 S24

Experiential Learning

In American Studies, students explore U. S. culture and society, developing an international lens. Small classroom discussion seminars and hands-on learning broaden understanding of America in a global context through museum art visits, field site work, and more.
Greetings from the Richmond Exhibit
  • On the first day of class, the American Studies Capstone Seminar, taught by Nicole Sackley, associate professor of history and American studies, gathered at UR Downtown and walked to The Valentine, just five blocks away.
  • Students explored the This is Richmond, Virginia exhibition at The Valentine with Meg Hughes, curator of archives.
  • At the Virginia Historical Society, the class met with Paige Newman, associate archivist for collections processing, to learn about their archives.
  • At the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Assistant Curator of American Art Christopher Oliver, ’04, led a tour of the exhibition The Likeness of Labor. The class viewed photographs that were not included — a great lesson in curatorial practice.
  • Each student played a critical role in the development and installation of the exhibition. Caroline Weber, ’16, puts up the labels in the Wilton Companies Gallery at UR Downtown.
  • Greetings from Richmond, Virginia: Visitors through the Centuries includes 26 visitors — from Black Hawk to Lizzie Armitstead — spanning three centuries. Each student told the story of two visitors.
  • The exhibition features vintage postcards that celebrate Richmond as a city of history, leisure, and commerce - themes in the exhibition - and show what visitors were writing home about. Guests can take a postcard and share using #GreetingsFromRichmond.
  • The students, Nicole Sackley, and Alexandra Byrum, UR Downtown educational programming coordinator, gather at UR Downtown for the RVA First Fridays exhibition opening. Nearly 100 students, faculty, staff, and community members were in attendance.
  • Karolina Castro, ’16, answers questions as a friend explores guidebooks from Boatwright Library’s Special Collections. The exhibition also features Richmond tourism videos from 1955, 1977, and 2012 and tourist iteneraries from 1850, 1910, 1963, and 2016.
  • “Richmond — capital of the Cavaliers — a city that is mellow and yet modern, where the rustle of the past may still be heard amid the bustle of the present,” stated the 1937 publication, A Tour of Historic Richmond, one of five quotations that were chosen
  • Guests explore 19th and early 20th century visitors to Richmond below the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “I am captivated with it all; I am tempted to stay here.” (1905).

Faculty Highlights

Dr. Lauren Craig Tilton
Tilton Promoted & Named Robins Professor

Lauren Tilton was promoted to professor of digital humanities and was appointed the E. Claiborne Robins Professor of Liberal Arts. Tilton specializes in analyzing, developing, and applying digital and computational methods to the study of 20th and 21st century documentary expression and visual culture.

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Dr. Lauren Craig Tilton
Tilton and Undergraduate Awarded

Lauren Tilton, E. Claiborne Robins Professor of Liberal Arts and Digital Humanities, and undergraduate student Mia Lazar, '24, have received a grant from Virginia Humanities for their project, Digital Documerica: Picturing the Environment in 1970’s America. Digital Documerica is a joint project of The Digital Scholarship Lab and the Distant Viewing Lab.

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Dr. Lauren Craig Tilton
Tilton Awarded

Photogrammar, a project led by Lauren Tilton, associate professor of digital humanities; and Taylor Arnold, associate professor of statistics; along with colleagues in the Digital Scholarship Lab at UR and American Studies at Yale University, was awarded the American Studies Association's 2022 Garfinkel Prize in Digital Humanities.

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Dr. Lauren Craig Tilton
Tilton and Arnold Awarded

Lauren Tilton, associate professor of digital humanities, and Taylor Arnold, associate professor of statistics, received a $485,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation for their Distant Viewing Toolkit project. Learn more.

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Resources

Digital America

Digital Scholarship Lab

Contact Us

Mailing address:
American Studies Program
Carole Weinstein International Center, Room 306
211 Richmond Way
University of Richmond, Virginia 23173

Phone: (804) 484-1471
Fax: (804) 484-1577

Program Coordinator: Stephen Brauer
Academic Administrative Coordinator: Lynn Hardwicke