The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics

The field of American studies emerged in the 1930s when literary scholars and historians began to focus on American history as distinct from European history. American studies scholars were interested in American society and cultural development, topics that were best addressed with an interdisciplinary lens. Prototypical versions of American studies emerged as early as the 19th century with figures like John Dewey and Alexis de Tocqueville. In the early 20th century, W. E. B. DuBois was a prominent influence on the development of the field. American studies created a venue for interdisciplinary work at a time when academic disciplines usually maintained rigid boundaries. Scholars worked across disciplines with the guiding assumption that American culture was too complex to be contained in the history departments of the day that focused on government and warfare without recognizing the importance of cultural and social matters.

In the first years of the Cold War, some American studies scholarship overlapped with area studies and deliberated on the unique position of the United States, particularly in terms of American exceptionalism and its implications for Cold War policy and the national security state. The American Studies Association (ASA) was founded in 1951, and scholars turned to a critique of American exceptionalism.