Oregon Humanities

Humanities Front and Center

OSU–Cascades professors mobilize to offer American Studies major.

Ellen Santasiero

Last fall, Oregon State University–Cascades English professor Neil Browne posted on his office door an excerpt from Harper’s magazine describing the marginalization of humanities programs in academia. That trend, Browne says, weakens graduates’ grasp of civic values and their ability to express them.

Such concern is part of what motivated Browne and his colleagues to propose a new American Studies major, one grounded in the humanities and heavily guided by interdisciplinary principles. “We’re trying to put humanities back in the center of civic discussion,” Browne says. “The humanities teach people how to think and communicate from multiple perspectives. Students need that to succeed in the twenty-first century.”

To test student interest, last fall the professors taught four courses focused on the 1960s. The courses—one was on the Vietnam War, another on the Grateful Dead—proved popular, fueling the professors’ hopes for an official major in 2010.

Browne and Henry Sayre, distinguished professor of art history, already teach a popular year-long sequence of courses called A Cultural History of American Art and Literature. Sayre, who will co-teach in the program with Browne and others,
points out that OSU–Cascades’ program will be global in scope. “You can’t talk about twentieth-century America without talking about Dresden, Hiroshima, or Japanese technology.”