Welcome from the Director

Welcome to the Center for American Studies! 

Here at the Center, our interests — and our students’ — are as wide and varied as America itself. We’ve got courses on everything from equity in American higher education to the comic book industry, from Shakespeare on the American stage to Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. And they’re taught by scholars, practitioners, luminaries who find their homes in places ranging from departments throughout the university to the State Department, the nation’s leading newspapers and magazines, and the worlds of business and art.

That’s because we’re at Columbia University in the City of New York - and American Studies, as much as anywhere else at the university, strives to live up to that title by bringing some of the most eminent, exciting, thoughtful people in the city to work with students here, on Morningside Heights. And in doing that, we help students prepare for the world out beyond those gates. 

And because that preparation isn’t just for a career, it’s for a life, we also think carefully about what it means to be a member of American society - whether that’s by involving students in city life by working with community service organizations like  The Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center and the Freedom and Citizenship Program, or getting engaged in this community - and make no mistake, we think of this place as an ever-growing, ever-renewing community - in a wide variety of ways. 

Come join us. Take a look around. Learn more, in every sense of those words. We can’t wait to meet you. 

Jeremy Dauber

Mendelson Family Professor of American Studies and Director of the Center for American Studies; Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.