The American Studies Journal is a peer-reviewed open-access journal that provides a forum for intellectual debate about all aspects of social, cultural, and political life in the United States of America. It aims to present new and challenging research in the humanities to both academic and non-academic audiences around the world. 

Three elements make up the asjournal.org web presence: the American Studies Journal with its offerings of scholarly and methodological content, the ASJ Occasional Papers series as a web space for longer articles that do not fit into the thematically focused issues of the journal, and the American Studies Blog with its topical observations and comments on present-day U.S. society and culture. 

Current Issue

No. 70 (2020)
Digital Pedagogy in American Studies

Edited by Ingrid Gessner and Uwe Küchler

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Preceding Issue

No. 69 (2020)
Miscellaneous Articles

Edited by Heike Paul, Martina Kohl, and Hans-Jürgen Grabbe

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New ASJ OCCASIONAL PAPERs

No. 18 (2020)
Playing for Keeps: The Diggers, Life-Acting and Guerrilla Theater in San Francisco’s Psychedelic ‘60s
by Sean Steele, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The Diggers, a subversive subset of the broader American counterculture in San Francisco in the 1960s, stood for a unique form of anarchist theater. They presented a form of performance art they referred to as life-acting the game of freedom which was itself a form of what they dubbed guerrilla theater. The essay examines the Diggers as a unique element within the American counterculture that deserves a critical reappraisal. 

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No. 17 (2020)
Liquid Genealogy: Choice, Race, and Neoliberal Subjectivity in DNA Ancestry Advertising
by Emma Jacobs, University of London, SOAS
 
How does commercial DNA ancestry testing navigate the apparently conflicting ideologies of individual freedom and genealogical determinism? By exploring the cultural politics of this vast and growing industry and analyzing video advertisements by 23andMe and Ancestry.com, two key figures emerge in these adverts: the unexpectedly “not-quite-white” individual and the maximally “mixed-race” individual.

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Upcoming ASJ Occasional Paper

Upcoming thematic Issue

No. 71 (2021)
Spending Time in the Nineteenth Century
ed. by Ulrike Jordan, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main

What others say about us

“This journal, and this site, should be on the main screen of every educator’s experience. Tell one and tell all about it – it’s good, substantial, entertaining, and informative.”

Cheryl LaGuardia, Research Librarian, Widener Library, Harvard University,
Magazines for Libraries Update 30 Jan. 2015.