All aboard the AMSTrack!

Anjali Ofori (CAS ’27) came to Georgetown set on studying public policy and living at the Capitol Campus. However, she found herself in a limbo of wanting to explore politics without highly defined course requirements. Her search for a middle ground ended with her first-year seminar, “Race and Class in D.C.,” an American Studies class taught by professor Sherry Linkon. 

“That’s how I got into the AMST pipeline,” Ofori said, using the acronym for American Studies. “I was super interested.” 

Many students describe their journey to the American Studies (AMST) program as exactly that: a pipeline. The program recruits through word-of-mouth and shared spaces. 

We were not immune to this trend. In August, we both joined the Voice as staff writers for the opinion section. Through conversations with fellow writers—several of whom are AMST majors—we were predisposed to pledge allegiance to the United States of American Studies. As recently accepted students, we decided to investigate what the program has to offer and its potential shortcomings.

Foundations of AMST 

The so-called AMST “pipeline” was born from a moment of national urgency. 

Founded in 1969, Georgetown’s AMST program emerged amid national upheaval in protest against the Vietnam War. Professor Brian Hochman, AMST program director, said the major was a deliberate effort to diversify the rigid course-by-course academic experience, and instead imagine a Georgetown curriculum that wasn’t siloed into traditional departments.

“It was an attempt to imagine the Georgetown humanities curriculum in a slightly more open-ended way,” Hochman said in an interview with the Voice. “And that was consistent with the spirit of protest and inquiry that dominated college campuses at the time.”

AMST majors apply during their freshman year. Upon acceptance, they are pre-registered for “Origins and Identities,” a course taken during their sophomore fall and the first of six core classes that focus on understanding historical racial, gendered, and class-based power dynamics in the U.S. The goal is to reshape students’ approach to their studies.

“American Studies is less of a discipline and more of a way to think,” Ofori said. “It really forces students to tackle the bigger picture of what’s really going on in the U.S. in history versus how we remember the things that are happening.”

Between the sophomore entry and senior thesis, AMST offers a level of curricular freedom that often surprises students. By engaging with cross-listed classes, students can carve out their own niches through seemingly disparate electives, from “Constitutional Law” to “Storytelling & Hip-Hop.” 

A famous quirk of the program is its cohort model. Because of the major’s small size, students move through their core requirements as a single, tight-knit unit. For sophomores like Ofori, this offered a social lifeline.

“I really value the cohort model,” Ofori said, referring back to her time in an International Baccalaureate program in high school. “It’s just always something that I’ve gravitated towards, having a strong sense of community in my education.”

As students who went to relatively small high schools, having access to a familiar group will allow us to build support systems and form connections that span beyond the classroom. 

Hochman noted that the model fosters lasting academic connections.

“The conversation is ongoing rather than restarting every single semester,” Hochman said. “Even if the conversations you’re having are different over the course of the classes, it ensures that there is one very concrete goal in mind. ”

If the cohort is the heart of the major, the senior thesis is its spine. AMST remains one of the few programs at Georgetown that requires every graduate to complete a year-long independent research project.

While the prospect of a 60-80 page paper is daunting, AMST program manager Colva Weissenstein (GRAD ’08) sees it as the moment when students take possession of their education.

“Thesis was how I found my way to American Studies,” Weissenstein said. 

Weissenstein originally joined the program as a teaching assistant while completing the Communication, Culture, and Technology graduate program at Georgetown.

“[The thesis] is a small part of my job on paper, but emotionally, it’s like the very part of it,” Weissenstein said. “I’m in the thesis class with the students. I keep track of their assignments, just sort of keep a sense of it so that if anyone is ever in a place where they’re floundering, as one does when one is doing an enormous project, then I can just be like ‘No, I’m up to speed.’”

As incoming American Studies students, this intellectual flexibility has excited us as we start planning our sophomore year. The ability to take elective courses spanning many fields, such as anthropology, disability studies, and journalism, will allow us to explore new areas of interest while simultaneously fulfilling major requirements.

Finding inspiration abroad 

For Regebe Bekele (CAS ’26), the AMST curriculum reimagines American history as a series of interconnected narratives rather than a linear sequence of events. 

This contrasts Bekele’s first impression of AMST, where she was originally apprehensive that the program would be a good fit.  

“I think I initially had an adjustment period with AMST,” Bekele said. “But I wouldn’t say it’s unique to AMST and more of Georgetown University as an institution. It’s a [predominantly white institution]. Very white, very wealthy, and a little ignorant at times.”

Despite her initial struggles, Bekele felt that she was able to truly embrace the major through her study abroad and her senior thesis.

In her junior spring, Bekele studied in Seoul, South Korea. She took a course titled “How You Wave,” examining how Korean culture was shaped by American Black culture and reinterpreted through a distinctly Korean lens. This class, combined with “Black Fandoms,” a Black Studies course she took with Georgetown professor Brienne Adams, became a launchpad for her senior thesis. 

After her time in Seoul, Bekele went to Tokyo, Japan, for a summer program. She immersed herself in Japan’s expansive media culture, visiting sites like the iconic Sega store in Shibuya.

Coincidentally, Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) film was in production at the time, sparking online discourse over whether or not Sonic was a Black character. Bekele decided to explore Sonic’s connection to Black culture in her final class paper. She highlighted how the Black community used transformative fandom—the process of fans actively building on a story’s “canon” or written reality—to reimagine Sonic as a character of color. 

When she returned to Georgetown for her senior year, Bekele used the paper as an outline for her senior thesis, titled “‘Make Sonic Black Again, We Not Gon’ Get Mad’: Analyzing Discourse and Identity in Black Digital Fandoms.”  

Redefining America 

Sophomores Hannah Gilheany (CAS ’28) and Corbin Chance (CAS ’28) first heard of AMST through the Georgetown University College Democrats, where many of the student board members were current majors. 

Like many AMST students, Gilheany initially planned to pursue a government major. However, due to the immense size of the program, she felt it lacked a sense of connection between students and professors. As an AMST and Government double major, she filled this gap with the tight-knit academic network AMST offers. 

“When you walk into an AMST classroom, everyone hangs out,” Gilheany said. “I like to get there early so I can talk to people.” 

Chance said that the AMST major has helped him “make sense of what America is.” Growing up in a rural small town as a queer person, Chance said he had a closed-minded view of society, but that being in D.C. and attending AMST classes allowed him to embrace a new perspective. 

“College is never what I imagined it to be. Urban America is never what I imagined it to be,” Chance said. “Every single time I walk into the classroom for one of my AMST credits, I feel like I’m being open to a new perspective or a new way of looking at America I had not even imagined before, and I think that that’s really, really special.” 

Gilheany and Chance also see space for improvement within the program. Both shared concerns that there was not enough diversity in perspectives due to their cohort’s demographics. 

Chance explained that his AMST cohort is predominantly white. 

“Discussions will automatically be guided by the fact that we are majority white,” Chance said. “The program needs to open up to just more perspective and voices.” 

Gilheany said that this lack of diverse perspectives could be traced to the program’s recruitment tactics, usually relying on word-of-mouth. 

“It can sometimes fall into the super echo chamber because a lot of students taking [AMST] have similar political beliefs,” Gilheany said. “It can be easy to get comfortable and feel that everyone agrees but the world looks very different than that.” 

Shortcomings and future outlooks

Ofori said that while her own cohort is relatively diverse, there remains a stigma of the program being filled with “woke white kids.” 

“The whole point of American studies is uplifting minority voices,” Ofori said. “And so I would just love for people of color to see that this is a major for them, and I would love for the major itself to incorporate more voices from people of color.”

Bekele also said that discussions of race in her AMST classes have fallen flat in some areas. 

Specifically, in her second sophomore core course, “Memory, Power and Culture,” she recalled reading Moby Dick, a novel that follows a racially diverse crew in their hunt for a supernatural whale. But rather than discussing the barriers facing fictional characters, Bekele wished that they had analyzed firsthand experiences of people of color in the U.S., to make discussions more relevant and engaging. 

Bekele said she believes there needs to be more intentionality in discussing different narratives and historical figures, especially within the sophomore core classes, which are designed to establish context for future courses. 

 “We’re not just patting ourselves on the back because we have, like, one surface-level discussion on race in America,” Bekele said.  “There’s a lot more going on.” 

As a first-generation, low-income (FGLI) student, Bekele said that her parents were extremely supportive of her decision to commit to AMST, unlike some of her peers within the Georgetown Scholars Program, a university initiative that provides financial and communal support to low-income students. However, like some students, Bekele still faced an internal battle to convince herself that she was making the right decision both financially and emotionally. 

“I did think it took a lot of me looking at all these career paths I can do, to be like, ‘I am learning critical thinking. I’m learning communication skills. I’m learning writing skills,’ which can take me into literally any path that I want,” Bekele said.

As FGLI students ourselves, this perspective was refreshing: liberal arts can provide students with tools for success in spite of the stigma surrounding job-hunt efficacy. Marginalized students often feel an attraction to pre-professional tracks for their seemingly guaranteed profit. Choosing AMST may seem like a pull against the grain, when in fact, it is equipping us with employable skillsets.

After our conversation, Bekele left us with parting advice: “This is a space for you, too, and you can do incredible things because the humanities isn’t for just, like, rich white people. We can be creative, and we can be successful.”