As Chair of the British Association of American Studies, which represents the thousands of undergraduates, postgraduates, and staff currently working in this field in the UK, I was shocked to learn that the University of Nottingham is proposing to close all the degree programmes in its Department of American Studies. 

This Department has been an outstanding, world-leading centre for teaching and research on North American history, society, literature, culture, and politics for nearly half a century. It has indelibly shaped public and academic understanding of the United States over that time, both in the UK and abroad, training generations of students who have gone on to play major roles in business, politics, media, and academia across the globe, all thanks to the transnational approaches and expertise they have had access to in the Department.

It is notable that in the last Research Excellence Framework exercise the Department of American Studies at Nottingham was ranked third in the Area Studies unit of assessment and was one of the top-performing units across the whole of the University of Nottingham. This is just one testament to the exceptional and vital role the Department plays in fostering new and important ways of understanding the US.

The consequence of closing these degrees and potentially making all the members of the Department redundant will be that the Arts Faculty at Nottingham has no US expertise in any of its units. For a Russell Group university like Nottingham, which claims to be an outward-looking, global institution, to completely extract itself from this field of study is astounding. There has arguably never been a more urgent moment to offer students and the wider public expert knowledge on the world’s leading cultural, political, and economic superpower, and the historical roots of its influence. 

Every other higher education institution in the UK, whether big or small, has some teaching provision in American topics as part of its Arts and Humanities offer to students. Departments solely dedicated to “American Studies” have certainly become less common in recent years, as students have increasingly moved away from interdisciplinary degrees to more traditionally designated ones. But these changes are precisely a consequence of how Americanist teaching and scholarship can be and has long been delivered, very successfully, within other departments and schools such as English, History, or Politics, and continues to thrive there.

The Department of American Studies has presented the senior management of the University of Nottingham with a detailed proposal that comprehensively responds to these market shifts, and that will bring new and very significant benefits to other units within the restructuring project the university is currently undertaking. But senior management has so far chosen simply to ignore this proposal. 

Please show your support for the preservation of Americanist teaching and research at the University of Nottingham, and demand that the university listen to its staff’s proposals, by signing this petition.

If you would like further information on how you can support Americanists at the University of Nottingham you can contact the British Association of American Studies at chair@baas.ac.uk