A Few Remarks on American Studies and the American University

This paper presents an attempt to briefly examine the specific character of the institutional site of the disciplinary articulation of knowledge in the USA. The paper proposes that such an attempt should involve several areas of focus. First, there is a need to locate the place of the American university as a subject matter within American studies as a discipline. The second question is about the need to assess the centrality of the notion of liberal education to the American university. The third question is about the current crisis of the university and whether that crisis affects the idea of liberal education. Finally, the paper also suggests that in the context of the present-day crisis it is increasingly necessary to re-problematize the question of communication among disciplines, within or outside the context of American studies