The Clinton Institute : Doing Americann Studies in Ireland
The Clinton Institute : Doing Americann Studies in Ireland

Summary/Abstract: The Clinton Institute for American Studies was established at University College Dublin in 2003 with the support of the Irish government to promote academic research and public discussion about the United States in Ireland and beyond. In the last four years the Institute has developed Masters and PhD programs in American Studies, working closely with allied departments in the humanities and social sciences so as to maximize teaching potential, and has supported several dedicated research projects which promote collaborations between Irish-based and international scholars in American Studies. It also runs a program of outreach activities—including public lectures, exhibitions, workshops for teachers in Ireland, and an international Summer School aimed at graduate students from across the world (for details on the Institute’s programs and activities, see www. ucd. ie/amerstud).Under conditions of globalization the meanings of ‘America’ circulate widely today and there is a mass-mediated common knowledge about American life spreading across the world. Yet, wherever we are in the world, we perceive and understand the United States from regional and local perspectives, and in response to cultural, political and economic imperatives of our own locations. We are conscious of this as we develop teaching and research programs at the Clinton Institute, and we place a strong emphasis on viewing the United States from the ‘outside’, situating it in relation to comparative, transnational and geopolitical frames of study. Core strands of teaching and research focus attention on transatlantic issues, including US relations with Ireland and Western Europe. A key aim in the Institute’s mission statement is to provide students, researchers and policy-makers with a forum for understandingchanging relations between the US and Atlantic nations in their historical complexity and in relation to contemporary ideological, political and intellectual debates.

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