A country can be studied as a collection of events—or as a story it tells about itself. Early American studies often chose the second path.
Parrington’s “Broad Path”
Vernon Louis Parrington helped establish the field by combining literary criticism with historical research. Rather than focusing only on artistic style, he traced how ideas developed through America’s political, economic, and social life. His three-volume Main Currents in American Thought won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.
Henry Nash Smith later carried this interdisciplinary vision into academic life. His doctoral work at Harvard helped create a precedent for programs that crossed traditional departmental boundaries.
Myths Hidden in Texts
The field’s first signature method became known as “myth and symbol.” Scholars including Smith, John William Ward, and Leo Marx looked for repeated themes in American writing. The frontier, the machine, political heroes, and pastoral ideals became more than subjects: they were treated as symbols revealing how Americans imagined their nation.
This method promised to connect literature with national character. A novel, speech, or historical account could be read as evidence of deeper cultural beliefs.
The Problem of a Single America
Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, critics argued that myth-and-symbol scholarship often promoted American exceptionalism—the belief that the United States possessed a unique mission and virtue. It could make one dominant cultural tradition appear representative of everyone.
Later scholars reworked the method through multicultural studies, bringing more attention to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and marginalized communities.
The lasting lesson is that national myths are powerful precisely because they feel natural. American studies began by interpreting those myths—and gradually learned to question who created them, who was excluded, and what they concealed.