美国学:学科成长与中国意义

American Studies:Growth of the discipline and Its Chinese Implications

美国学是一个年轻的学科,从20世纪初起步,迄今已经成长为一门涵盖人文和社会科学学科的具有鲜明特色的交叉学科,体现着美国文明独特的主体精神和价值追求。然而,美国学在发展过程中也产生了诸多困惑,学界在学科定位、学术主题、研究方法论和学术社群等方面各执一词,鲜有共识。尤其是美国之外的美国学研究更是无法摆脱挫折感,美国学不过是向本国介绍美国学者的研究成果,难以展开原创性的理论研究。对中国来说,突破现有美国学研究困境的一个途径是加强问题意识,淡化学科意识,加强比较方法,走中层理论的道路。

American Studies is one of young disciplines in America.Since the beginning of 20th century,American Studies has become an interdisciplinary study with prominent character combining humanities and social sciences and embodies American's special subject aspirations and the concern of social values. However,in the course of the development of American Studies,there remain a lot of paradoxes and deep controversies among scholars,such as discipline positioning,research topics,methodologies and academic community.In particular,the American Studies outside of the United States has definitely never been extricated themselves from the feeling of frustration,as their job seems to be the introduction of American scholars' research to the mother country.Therefore it is very difficult for them to push any initiative theoretical studies.For Chinese scholars,the effective way of breaking through the present dilemma in American Studies is to weaken the sense of discipline,strengthen the comparative methodology and persist in the approach of middle range theories.