Master of Arts (MA) Program

While at the BA level our program focuses on the US American Studies, our MA program offers a wider Western Hemispheric perspective and, even more crucially, a highly individualized, research-oriented curriculum allowing students to develop graduate and research skills. Thoroughly interdisciplinary, the program builds on classical American Studies—US American government and politics, US foreign policy, US history and society, American literature and intellectual history. But ASC’s program is unique among such programs in Poland in that it also includes approaches critically engaging the discipline, incorporating ethnic and indigenous studies, critical race theory and Black studies, gender and queer studies, disability studies, and environmental studies.

MA Program for 2022/23

Semester 1

Hemispheric Lecture: International Relations in the Western Hemisphere

Key Readings in American Studies

Two of the following research proseminars of your choice (one in humanities and one in social sciences):

• American Political Parties: Continuity and Change
• Civil Society and American Citizenship
• New York and Chicago: The Cities and Their People
• Social Movements and Social Change in Contemporary America
• Contemporary American Cinema
• Politics of Popular Genres: American SF, Crime Fiction, and Romance in Critical Methodological Review
• Writing Migration
• Slavery and the Making of the Americas

Academic Writing MA

Advanced English or Spanish – various levels following
placement test

Semester 2

One of senior research lectures of your choice

Three research proseminars of your choice:

The listings for Spring 2023 are not finalized, but in the previous semesters course offerings included:

• American Culture Wars
• Listening for Weirdness: Dialogic Interpretations of American Music
• Dynamics of American Political Parties: Continuity and Change
• Strange Territories: American Weird Fiction
• Social Movements and Social Change in Contemporary America
• Introduction to Comics Studies
• Issues in American Political Thought
• American Poetry: Politics, Movements, Manifestos

Advanced English or Spanish – various levels following
placement test

Semester 3

MA Seminar I

Texts in American Culture/Texts in Latin American Culture

Two senior research lectures:

The Fall 2023 course offerings are not finalized yet. Fall 2021 options for second-year students include: 

• Religious Pluralism in the United States
• Imaginative Resonances: Literature and Science in the 19th-century America
• Manifest Destiny and U.S. Foreign Policy

Two elective courses:

The Fall 2023 course offerings are not finalized yet. Fall 2022 options for second-year students include:

• Latinxs and Hispanic Identities
• The History of Religion and Community in American Society
• American Individualism
• Landscape Photography: Perspective on America

Practical project

Semester 4

MA Seminar II

Open lectures

You need to collect 30 credits worth of open lectures offered by the ASC and other departments. Individual lectures typically earn you 2 or 3 credits each.

1 or 2 elective courses offered by other departments at UW worth the cumulative of 6 ECTS points.

A student enrolled in an ASC class is allowed to miss no more than two class meetings in a given semester (no medical documentation is required). In case of further absences medical documentation must be presented to the instructor and the student is obliged to arrange with the instructor how to make up for the classes missed. If absences are due to causes other than illness (eg. travel for research purposes), the student should notify the teacher at least a week before the planned absence and make arrangements concerning the required make-up work. Absences due to research travel require written support from MA supervisor. Instructors have the right to fail students who have missed more than two class meetings for reasons not related to health.

NOTE: The above rules concern electives, proseminars and seminars in both the BA and the MA program; they do not concern lecture courses.

Class Attendance Rules

A student enrolled in an ASC class is allowed to miss no more than two class meetings in a given semester (no medical documentation is required). In case of further absences medical documentation must be presented to the instructor and the student is obliged to arrange with the instructor how to make up for the classes missed. If absences are due to causes other than illness (eg. travel for research purposes), the student should notify the teacher at least a week before the planned absence and make arrangements concerning the required make-up work. Absences due to research travel require written support from MA supervisor. Instructors have the right to fail students who have missed more than two class meetings for reasons not related to health.

NOTE: The above rules concern electives, proseminars and seminars in both the BA and the MA program; they do not concern lecture courses.

Open Academic Sessions (OZN)

Each ASC student receives an OZN card. The purpose of this requirement is to enhance ASC students’ intellectual development through participation in a variety of extracurricular academic activities: public lectures, debates, seminars, or cultural events such as film festivals. While the OZN calendar is kept full by the coordinator, many OZN events are suggested by faculty and students. We strongly encourage student initiative – the whole point is for you to attend events that interest you. The OZN requirement 30 points for MA studies. In most cases, 1 OZN is awarded for 45 minutes of an academic activity. Each ASC student receives an OZN card where events should be listed. Each event should be signed by the organizer or a member of ASC faculty present.

NOTE: OZN points are not attached to any single semester–you should collect them and receive credit throughout your studies.

Read more about the OZN program opportunities and grading below.