The British Association for American Studies at fifty

Contemporary Review, April, 2004 by Philip John Davies

The annual conference is the major research-based event organised by BAAS. The location of this yearly meeting moves around the UK, reflecting the national distribution of the American Studies community. American Studies in Britain gives members a forum for information exchange, but BAAS has joined the move to the Internet. The Association's website, http://baas.ac.uk, holds the latest news of interest to researchers and teachers in American Studies, including copies of many BAAS publications.

This community embeds more than academic knowledge into UK society. My BAAS colleagues often studied in the USA, and many have taught there. Some have relatives there, all have made trans-Atlantic friendships. They keep in touch with former teachers across the pond, and know that more former students will join those already in this trans-Atlantic network. I fall into every category on this list--my friends, family, teachers and students are a trans-Atlantic lot. On 11th September 2001 one graduate from the university programme that I teach died in New York, and one US exchange student who I had welcomed to England only a couple of years before was killed in Washington DC. She had come to Britain to learn about us and our country, and, as so many of us have found as we travelled trans-Atlantically, she also learned much about herself and her home.

In spite of its growth over the past two generations, there is still a certain fragility about American Studies in the United Kingdom, and in recent years while some new programmes have emerged, others have disappeared. Many programmes are relatively small, and only a minority of undergraduate American Studies degrees are taught from Departments or Schools of American Studies. In most cases the subject is made available by teaching teams working cooperatively across the boundaries of traditional disciplinary structures. These are circumstances that can lead to dynamic cross-fertilisation and to the development of challenging and engaging topics for teaching and research. They are also circumstances that have not always been conducive to protecting the resource base of the subject. The loss of a colleague through retirement or relocation to a post elsewhere, combined with a shift of emphasis within a department that has been contributing to an American Studies programme, can destabilise provision very quickly.

Even well-established and reputable programmes can undergo radical change. The University of Keele, having to find overall economies in its budget, has over the past couple of years reduced the staffing of a number of departments, including its top-ranked School of American Studies. The Institute of US Studies, a postgraduate programme in the University of London's School of Advanced Study, is currently being merged with the Institute of Latin American Studies to create a new Institute for the Study of the Americas. Both of these moves have attracted publicity suggesting the decline of American Studies in the UK. In fact the University of Keele retains a large and vibrant American Studies programme, and the Institute for the Study of the Americas may end up providing more faculty resources in US Studies than its predecessor, but the immediate impression is one of reduction and dilution of the American Studies research and teaching base in the UK.