The American Studies Forum is a 7-day series of thought-provoking lectures on contemporary issues in the United States designed for university professors, scholars and graduate students from throughout the Asia-Pacific region who want to deepen their knowledge of America, its culture and its people. The lectures are delivered by prominent American scholars, each of whom selects a theme around which the annual forum is focused.

The Forum's workshop atmosphere provides a unique opportunity for Asia-Pacific scholars to dialogue in a small group environment with leading specialists of American Studies. Participants from more than ten countries consistently give the Forum high accolades for broadening their perspectives on America and American Studies, while at the same time providing an opportunity to develop friendships with colleagues from other countries.

Featured speakers in recent years have included Dr. Donald Worster (University of Kansas), Dr. Michael Cowan (University of California-Santa Cruz), Dr. Deane Neubauer (University of Hawai`i), Dr. Eric Sandeen (University of Wyoming), Dr. Seymour Lutzky (University of Hawai`i), Dr. Eric J. Sandeen (University of Wyoming), Dr. James Farrell (St. Olaf College, Minnesota), Dr. Norman R. Yetman (University of Kansas), Dr. Doris Friedensohn (Jersey City State College), Dr. Roberta L. Wollons (Indiana University Northwest), Dr. Russ Castronovo (University of Maimi), Dr. Dana D. Nelson (University of Kentucky), Dr. Neal Milner (University of Hawai`i), Dr. Jay Mechling (University of California-Davis), and Dr. Priscilla Wald (Duke University). Among the wide variety of historical, literary, cultural and sociological topics treated in the Forum are the following:

• Nature & Culture in America
• Inventing "America": The Politics of National Symbolism
• American Mythologies: Popular Culture & Folklore
• Surveying American Terrain: American Regions and the Culture of the United States
• The Moral Ecology of Everyday Life
• The American People in the Twentieth Century: The Changing Dynamics of Race, Ethnicity, and Religiion in American Life
• Diversity in Contemporary America: Collisions, Suspicions, and Coalitions
• Education and the Family in the United States: Trends and Transformations
• Facing the Past, Facing the Future: America at the Start of the Twenty-First Century
• American Literature and American Society: Politics, Ideology, History
• Presidentialism and Other Forms of Democratic Representation
• New and Old Ethnic Politics in the United States
• Violence in America
• Science, Medicine, and Culture

To browse past forums and topics, please click here.

For more information on the 30th Annual American Studies Forum, please click on the links in the table to the left at the top of this page.