The Study of the Americas

The Master of Arts in the Study of the Americas offers students a liberal arts degree, in step with the most cutting-edge trends in interdisciplinary education. The program seeks to address new questions and concepts about the Americas as it focuses on topics such as racial identities, migration and immigration, popular culture, politics, gender relations, and human rights. It examines the historical, political economic and socio-cultural formations of the Americas.  As the name of the program suggests, our curriculum pays attention to both methodology and content, where "study" emphasizes our faculty’s expertise in conducting interdisciplinary research, and the "Americas" points to the way we look comparatively at spaces across the hemisphere and to consider, interrogate, and reevaluate the impact that concepts such as nation, race, and gender have had on regional and historical formations of family, community, governance, and civil society. The focus of the program is timely and joins an emerging field of study, that among its concerns, breaks apart notions about what the "Americas" are, how they are connected historically, politically, and culturally across national boundaries and transnational spaces. We call attention to how certain areas continue to be disenfranchised and examine the reasons for such marginalization.

Mission Statement of the M.A. in the Study of the Americas

One of the practical goals of our program is to nourish a collaborative space within which students may develop their intellectual engagement, applying diverse and myriad disciplinary approaches to intersections among education, policy, government, society, history, culture, and the arts. For students who already have careers, we offer a scholarly space in which they may engage their current professional responsibilities and interests using theoretical frameworks. For students who are preparing for a first career or career change, our program offers varying perspectives from which to explore potential paths.

A second concrete objective of our program is to provide students with a rigorous, well defined curriculum that not only grounds them in an interdisciplinary perspective, but one that also allows them to explore more individual interests. Our 30-credit program enables students, with approval, to take up to three 3-credit courses at another division within The City College or at another CUNY campus, or even benefit from the study abroad programs whose content areas complement that of the MA in the Study of the Americas. 

One of the historical missions of The City College of New York has been to serve the educational needs of the working people of the city. The college's Division of Interdisciplinary Studies represents the heart of this mission, and our MA program enhances our ability to serve working students more fully and successfully. Our program is intended to accommodate the busy schedules of professional students. The majority of our courses are taught in the evenings. As with all of The City College's curricula, our program is extremely rigorous, preparing students to master both academic and professional environments. Although only in existence since 2010, graduates and students in the program have gone on to work in the diplomatic sector, have been accepted to PhD programs, and have complemented their current careers in communications, education, health, law, human resources, or marketing.

To this end, our program is housed at the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education, which is located at 25 Broadway. Our facilities are state-of-the-art (Wi-Fi, smart classrooms, computer lab) and our infrastructure is extremely personalized: we have an in-house library and award-winning librarian, writing center and tutors, a student services coordinator with experience in career counseling, and a clinical psychologist. The Center for Worker Education also houses the Frances S. Patai Program in Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies, the Americas Poetry Festival of New York, the Americas Film Festival of New York, the CCNY Human Rights Forum, the International Conference on the Historical Links between Spain and America, and the Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Conference. The Center regularly hosts lecture series organized around themes that bring in outside scholars to share their research, such as "Human Rights," "Aesthetic and Cultural Expressions of African-Derived Religions," and "The Child."