Our four-year BA (Hons) degree in American Studies, with one year spent in the US, trains students in interdisciplinary ways of working, while also allowing them to examine the history, culture, and literature of the United States from the period of colonization through to contemporary times. In the course of this programme, students learn to master the approaches and tools found in several academic disciplines, including those of cultural theory, history, visual studies, literature, and politics, and are trained how to analyze and discuss a wide variety of materials. The first two years of study are completed in Manchester, and ground students in the knowledge of America's political, legal, and administrative infrastructure. During these years students will become familiar with a raft of concepts-such as mass incarceration, inequality, racial stratification, poverty, the logics of policing, the changing nature of work and leisure, radical organizing, military power, cultural imperialism, environmental policies, and urban politics-that have obvious wider reach in contemporary global societies. The second year allows for some concentration in the fields of American literature, film studies, and history, and also extends the training we provide in interdisciplinary ways of working. Students on this programme are able to spend one year at one of our North American partner universities, and this is undertaken in their third year. Upon returning to Manchester, students are able to choose from one of the richest selections of American Studies modules in the country, and they also complete a substantial piece of independent research. At Manchester we train our students to be attentive to the counter-currents of US history and literature, and this programme places a particular emphasis on the themes of race, capitalism, sexuality, the cultures of labour, and political protest, hoping to develop a stance that might be called `critical American Studies'. The course aims to provide students with a systematic introduction to key aspects of American literature, history, politics and film, exploiting their interdependence and distinctiveness within the discipline of American Studies; encourage independent study, the spirit of enquiry and a commitment to scholarly method appropriate to the field of American Studies; develop in students powers of critical and analytical thinking, the ability to apply these to primary and secondary texts, and to foster skills in written and verbal forms of expression; provide students with the opportunity to benefit from a period of study and life in the United States through a compulsory full academic year (4 year programme) at a North American partner university. The course aims to build knowledge and skills within two disciplines so that flexibility and choice increase as that base is established. By the final year, the contents of your studies are largely a function of your own choice.