The United States has long been a centre for innovation and creative expression in literature, art and popular culture.

For better or worse, Americans also play a pivotal role in debates with global significance, including the future of our environment, international standards of human rights, and questions of war and peace.  America's influential figures have included some people wielding formal power and others challenging the existing structures of authority.  The voices of Native Americans, African Americans, American women, wage labourers, gays and lesbians – to name just a few groups – have reverberated around the world.

The research and doctoral supervision interests of the School of American Studies at UEA range across disciplinary boundaries from the colonial period to the present, and offer expertise in literature and drama, politics and foreign policy, art, religion, gender, race relations, Native American history and literature, and African American history and culture.