American Studies as an International Students Guide to the US of A

From Diane Marian, an Education Major who was an exchange student from Freiburg, Germany

I am a student of the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. In Paul Croce's class, The 1950's and 1960's, I learned about American culture, history and politics. I learned about topics which were mostly already familiar to me, but in this class I understood how things were related and I gained detailed knowledge which led to a deeper understanding. That helped me to create a picture of America during this period and to understand American culture even better. The regular assignments we had to hand in improved my writings skills, and they helped me to revise what we did in class. Expressing a topic in my own words was an important factor of developing a deeper understanding. I found it great that this class had a balance between politics, history and culture. The projects, like playing games of the 1950's and 1960's, listening to music of that time or attending a discussion (growing up black and white in DeLand) made this class vivid and even more interesting and were a good contrast to the reading. I really liked this class because it was interesting, the learning atmosphere was very positive, and I learned a lot. Thus I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in American culture.