American Studies

The American Studies Program seeks to clarify the foundations of American thought and experience and to understand the challenge to these foundations posed by contemporary criticisms. It investigates the understanding of human nature, political order and justice shared by America's founders and by some earlier American statesmen, novelists, and poets. Central to this understanding is a concept of equality that aims at securing natural rights equally distributed to human beings by God, and a concept of liberty that is consistent with responsibility and moral virtue. Candidates consider how national institutions took shape within this earlier understanding and how they were subsequently transformed by 20th Century criticism of the founding. The program aims to re-establish the connections between American self-understanding and the Western tradition of reason, republicanism, and Biblical revelation. The Master of American Studies degree requires 30 hours of course work, a comprehensive examination, and participation in two semester institutes. No thesis or foreign language is required.

Degree Requirements

Master of American Studies

• Thirty hours of coursework from a select group of classes.
  (At least seven courses must be taken from Group I and three from Group II).
  
  Other courses may be taken on topics of importance to American
  thought with approval of program director and instructor.
  
  
• A Comprehensive examination over questions derived from
  course work.
  
  
• Special Requirements: As a final requirement in lieu of a
  thesis, the University will sponsor each semester an institute meeting for
  one day on a topic central to American Studies.
  Candidates for degree are expected to attend and participate. A portion of the comprehensive exam will be devoted to the issues addressed in the two institutes held during the year of matriculation. Typical topics for these semester institutes: The Puritan Origins of American Constitutionalism; Religion in America; The Bill of Rights; Literature and the American Founding; Natural Rights and the Constitution; Is the American Regime Necessarily Capitalist?; Hawthorne's America; Melville's Quarrel With His Country; Tocqueville's Democracy, Jefferson
  versus Hamilton; Slavery, the Progressivists; the Wilsonian Revolution; Contemporary Thought on the Founding; Equality: Then and Now; American Dramatists; Liberty: Then and Now; William Faulkner; the Anti-Federalists; the Southern Dissent; Willmoore Kendall on the American Political Tradition; John Dewey and American Education.

Applications and Financial Assistance

Application for admission includes a completed application form, two
letters of reference, a statement of purpose, an intellectual
autobiography, a sample of academic writing, and official transcripts of
previous college work. Completion of a bachelor's degree is a
prerequisite to entrance.

Tuition scholarships are available for the American Studies Program.
Students may receive merit-based scholarships for up to one-half of
their tuition.

Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture

The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, located on Routh Street near downtown Dallas, is affiliated with the University of Dallas and offers courses that may be used for credit towards the University's graduate degrees in Humanities. For information about the program offered at the Dallas Institute, please write or call them (2719 Routh St., Dallas, TX 75201; 214-871-2440) or visit their website at www.dallasinstitute.org.

Director and Cooperating Faculty

John Alvis, Professor (Director)
Ph.D., University of Dallas
"Crisis in the Understanding of Equality"; "Constitutional Principles and Natural Right"; Shakespeare's Understanding of Honor; The Political Plan of Zeus: Divine Purpose and Heroic Response in Homer and Virgil, "Melville's Quarrel With America," "The Political Thought of James Fenimore Cooper"

Thomas G. West, Professor
Ph.D., Claremont
Vindicating the Founders; Plato's Apology of Socrates

Glen E. Thurow, Professor
Ph.D., Harvard University
Abraham Lincoln and American Political Religion; American Government: Origins, Institutions, and Public Policy coauthored with James Ceaser, Joseph Bassette, Laurence OToole; "Equality and Constitutionalism"

R.J. Pestritto, Associate Professor
Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School
Founding the Criminal Law: Punishment and Political Thought in the Origins of America

Richard Dougherty, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Dallas
"Thomas Jefferson and the Rule of Law: Executive Power and American Constitutionalism"

For information about tuition, financial assistance, application forms and
registration, please write, call, or visit our website: Braniff Graduate
School of Liberal Arts, University of Dallas, 1845 East Northgate Drive,
Irving, Texas 75062-4736. Telephone: (972) 721-5106. Toll Free: (877)
708-3247. E-mail: graduate@udallas.edu. Web site: www.udallas.edu/
braniff

Courses

Group I (7 courses required)

Pol: Constitutional Law
Pol: Public Policy
Pol American Foreign Policy
Pol: The Presidency
Pol: Civil Rights
Pol: Congress
Pol: Hobbes, Rousseau
Pol: American Political Thought
Pol: U. S. Constitution
Pol: American Regime
Eng: Hawthorne, Melville, James
Eng: Augustan Literature
Eng: Southern Literature
Eng: Faulkner
Eco: The American Economy
His: The Scottish Enlightenment
Art: History of American Art
Phil: American Philosophy
Other courses on distinctly American topics (with approval of program
director and instructor).

Group II (3 courses required)

Eco: Law and Economics
Eco: Western Economic History II
Phil: Philosophical Anthropology
Phil: Ethics
Phil/Ed: Philosophy of Education
Phil: Plato
Eng: Shakespeare
Eng: Milton
Eng: Christian Epic
Eng: Classical Epic
Eng: Tragedy-Comedy
Pol: Thucydides
Pol: Plutarch, Augustine, Machiavelli
Pol: Aristotle's Poetics
Pol: Plato's Republic
Theo: Social Justice