How to Create an AP® American Studies Course

Many years ago, I remember standing outside my classroom door, greeting students as they arrived for the day. My classroom was next to one of the AP Lang teachers, who often did the same. We would have casual conversations, and on this particular day, some of our shared students were standing nearby, discussing the readings for their AP Lang class. They turned to me and asked, “What do you know about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X?” I replied, “We’ll cover them in the second semester when we hit Period Seven and the Modern Civil Rights movement. Why do you ask?” They explained they would be reading about them the following week and wanted my perspective. This gave me a moment of insight: why don’t AP Lang and AP U.S. History teachers coordinate their readings? We could cover the historical context, which they may not know as well, and they could handle the literary analysis, which we may not know as well. It seemed like a perfect way to enhance both courses.

This conversation sparked the creation of our AP American Studies program. Initially, we talked about simply coordinating our curriculums, but it eventually evolved into a combined class that merged the two. As I researched, I discovered that other schools were already running similar programs. When I reached out to them, I learned several key things: 1) Each program was structured differently—some targeted Gifted and Talented (GT) students, while others used it to promote a technology campus with a focus on Project-Based Learning (PBL); 2) Some districts had fully embraced this interdisciplinary approach, even extending it to AP Human Geography and AP World History classes; and 3) There were numerous ways to organize the course.

Determining Structure

The first step for us was to determine how to structure our class. We decided it wouldn’t just be for GT students. The AP U.S. History (APUSH) curriculum would form the backbone of the course, and the AP Lang readings would align tightly with our history content. Lastly, we would operate as a flipped classroom.

A quick note about the AP Lang structure: AP Lang is a skills-based course without specific content. A few years ago, the exam committee removed fiction from exam readings, so AP Lang focuses on nonfiction. However, our program had always followed the rough timeline of American literature, and we intended to keep it that way. Many AP Lang programs across the country use a thematic approach, such as units on environmentalism or education. We intentionally aligned our AP Lang readings with the APUSH curriculum.

Aligning APUSH and AP Lang

To maintain this alignment, I made some changes to the AP Lang class. We continued reading both fiction and nonfiction, but moved away from longer works like novels, which are common in AP Lang classes. My reasoning was twofold: we were spending too much time on fiction when the exam didn’t include it, and I wanted tighter alignment between the two courses. For example, it didn’t make sense to spend several weeks on The Great Gatsby when we only covered the 1920s in history for a few days. Using long fiction works would have thrown off the alignment, which would undermine the purpose of the class. However, I didn’t want to eliminate fiction entirely—I enjoy it, and I believe students do too. So, I started researching American short stories. The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story proved to be an invaluable resource, and I used it to build our reading list. I’ve included that list of short stories below. Nonfiction readings were used in both AP Lang and APUSH.

When students were assigned a nonfiction reading, it served both courses. In history, we focused on the historical context, arguments, and ideas in the text. In English, we analyzed the author’s purpose, audience, point of view, and rhetorical strategies like ethos, logos, and pathos. This approach lightened the students’ workload since the same text was used for both classes. The fiction readings were primarily for the English side, but I chose short stories that conveyed significant historical themes to show the connections. If a story didn’t engage meaningfully with its historical period, I didn’t assign it.

Flipped Classroom Approach

The course was a flipped classroom, which presented a few challenges. My AP U.S. History class was already somewhat flipped, though I hadn’t explicitly labeled it that way. Now, we were intentional about it. Students knew the course was going to be flipped before enrolling, and while some students embraced this, others opted out or dropped the course once they realized its demands. Those who dropped were moved to standalone AP Lang and AP U.S. History classes. We also had to educate students on what a flipped classroom actually involved, which was tricky since some of our middle school teachers had misused the term in ways that left a negative impression.

This class offered several advantages: 1) As a flipped classroom, students were more engaged, particularly in history, which traditionally followed a lecture format; 2) The alignment allowed students to make connections between disciplines; 3) The writing requirements for both courses were surprisingly similar, despite previous claims to the contrary, and we were able to collaborate on writing assignments; 4) The shared readings and assignments reduced the workload for students; 5) The class was double-blocked, meaning I saw the students for three hours every other day, allowing for deeper connections between students and teachers.

We didn’t just promote the course as a double-blocked class but as a program. While we covered the traditional political, social, and economic themes in American history, we also explored cultural topics like art, music, religion, and philosophy. We took field trips, including visits to the Amon Carter Fine Arts Museum in Fort Worth and the George W. Bush Presidential Library (Southern Methodist University) in Dallas. After the AP exams, we ended the year with a seven-day trip to Boston, exploring its rich historical and literary sites. It was a fantastic way to close out the year, giving us something meaningful to do without piling on more schoolwork like projects or research papers. Both students and teachers loved it!

Determining Format: Team-Teaching Vs. Solo Instruction

We also experimented with the format of the class, specifically in terms of who would teach it. In the early years, I team-taught the course with one of our AP Lang teachers on the English side. This arrangement worked fine, but the course truly flourished when I began teaching both sections—History and English—myself. If you opt for team teaching, it’s crucial that both teachers share common values and expectations. A lack of alignment can create a nightmare for both the instructors and the students. Once I took over both parts of the course, the consistency and unified vision brought much-needed cohesion to the program. It became a truly integrated class.

The experiment was a success, and the program has continued to thrive and grow each year. Our American Studies students experience remarkable success: they perform exceedingly well on the AP exams (a frequent concern from parents during the first couple of years) and gain a deeper appreciation for U.S. history than they would from taking the courses separately. I highly recommend it as a program.

Your reading list will naturally expand over time as you discover resources you enjoy and use regularly. For all our primary source readings in both AP U.S. History and AP Lang, we relied on the two-volume Opposing Viewpoints in American History, edited by William Dudley and John C. Chalberg, published by Gale Cengage Greenhaven Press.

When it came to secondary sources, I drew from four main resources:

1. History Now!, an online publication by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (available at [Gilder Lehrman Institute](https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now)),

2. The Magazine of History, a print publication from the Organization of American Historians, which is no longer published,

3. The American Historian, an online publication from the Organization of American Historians ([The American Historian](https://www.oah.org/tah/)),

4. American Heritage Magazine, an online publication ([American Heritage Magazine](https://www.americanheritage.com/)).

For the AP Lang side, I focused on short stories, many of which came from the Library of America collection ([Library of America](https://www.loa.org/)).

Information for the art presentations was taken from The Annotated Mona Lisa.

These resources provided a solid foundation for both primary and secondary readings in the program.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here’s a structured approach to presenting your breakdown of the units for the AP American Studies class, correlating with the AP U.S. History Course and Exam Description (CED), along with the sources (readings) used for each unit:

European Exploration (1.2-1.6)

• Opposing Viewpoint (OpV): none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Sale: “A Reassessment of Columbus”; Schafer: “Roots of Columbian Voyages”; Watts: “Science, Religion, & Columbus”; Palmer: “Black Diaspora After Columbus”; Barr: “Early American History Viewed West”; Norton: “Conquests of Chocolate”; Soria: “Columbus’s Spain”; Landers: “Black Settlements in Colonial Florida”
• AP Lang: Franklin: “Remarks on the Savages”; Irving: “Conquest of the Moon”

Settling the Americas (2.2-2.3) / Puritanism

• OpV: #1 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Horne: “1619”; Horne: “Founding English America – Jamestown”
• AP Lang: Winthrop: “A Modell of Christian Charity”

Development of the Atlantic World (2.4-2.6)

• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Snyder: “History of African Slavery”; Walsh: “Transatlantic Slave Trade”
• AP Lang: Wheatley: Poetry Selections
• OpV: #7 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Crevecoeur: “What is an American?”; Dennis: “American Indians, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting”; Norton: “Witchcraft in the North American Colonies”; Adams: “The Specter of Salem”; Beiler: “German Immigrants British America”; Sweeney: “Early Religious Traditions”
• AP Lang: Irish: “Jonathan Edwards on Spiders”

American and British Tensions (3.2-3.4, 3.12) / The Enlightenment

• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Kramnick: “Lockean Liberalism”; Irish: “Locke Biography”
• AP Lang: American Neoclassicism in Art
• OpV: #11 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: C.B. Brown: “Somnambulism”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Lewis: “Women in the American Revolution”; Godbear: “Courtship & Sex Freedom in 18th Century America”
• AP Lang: excerpts from Warren, Adams, and Murray
• OpV: #14 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Banning: “Rev Legitimacy of the Constitution”; Singer: “Why did the Founding Fathers write the Constitution”; Madison: “Liberty Westward - NW Ordinance”; Baxter: “NW Ordinance - 1st Bill of Rights”
• AP Lang: Irving: “Rip Van Winkle”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Vink: “Founding Slavers”; Adams on Slavery; O’Rourke: “Political Leadership in the Founding Era”
• AP Lang: Irving: “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Onuf: “The Age of Jefferson & Madison”
• AP Lang: American Romanticism in Art
• OpV: none; J.Q. Adams: “monsters to destroy”
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: Child: “The Lone Indian”; Simms: “The Indian Sketch”
• OpV: #24 (v.1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Larson: “The Market Revolution”; Friend: “Liberty is Pioneering”; Rilling: “Liberty is Innovation”; Tucker: “Liberty is Exploitation”; Rockman: “Liberty is Land and Slaves”
• AP Lang: Melville: “Paradise of Bachelors and Tartarus of Maids”
• OpV: #23 (v. 1); Tocqueville: Democracy in America, excerpts
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: Poe: “Mask of the Red Death” & “Bernice”
• OpV: #25 (v. 1); Emerson and Thoreau excerpts
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Johnson: “Religious Diversity in Antebellum”
• AP Lang: Hawthorne: “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” & “Young Goodman Brown”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Nash: “AA in Early America”; Schermerhorn: “Everyday Life Slaves in South”; Durrill: “Struggle for Emancipation”; Blyden: “Back to Africa”; White: “Slavery in the North”; Landers: “Slavery in Deep South”; Schwartz: “Family Life in Slave Quarters”
• AP Lang: Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, excerpts & Eastman, Aunt Phillis’s Cabin, excerpts
• OpV: #26 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: West: “Families in the West”
• AP Lang: Thorpe: “The Big Bear of Arkansas”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Rothman: “Slavery and National Expansion”
• AP Lang: Melville: Moby Dick, excerpts
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Egnal: “Economic Origins of the CW”; Earle: “Political Origins of the CW”; Finkelman: “Slavery, Const, Origins of CW”
• AP Lang: Crane: Ch. 6 & 7 The Red Badge of Courage & “The Veteran”
• OpV: #31 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: Bierce: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” & “Horseman in the Sky”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Williams: “Lincoln and Civil Liberties”; Wilentz: “Lincoln & Democracy”; Paludan: “Dictator Lincoln”; Medford: “Lincoln, Dilemma of Emancipation”; Farbar: “Lincoln’s Theory of Unionhood”; Forneri: “Lincoln’s Democratic Vision”
• AP Lang: Harte: “The Legend of Diablo”; Spofford: “The Moonstone Mass”
• OpV: #35 (v. 1)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Wilson: “Grant and Reconstruction”; Hale: “Lost Cause and Meaning of History”
• AP Lang: Chopin: “Desiree’s Baby” & “Story of an Hour”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Faragher: “Myth of the Frontier”; “The Turner Thesis and the West”
• AP Lang: Realism / Naturalism in American Art
• OpV: #6 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: Harte: “The Luck of Roaring Camp” & Jewett “A White Herron”
• OpV: #3 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Dicke: “The Small Business Tradition”; Blackford: “American Manufacturing”
• AP Lang: Alger: “The Two Acre Lot” & Twain: “Luck”
• OpV: #4 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: Garland: “Under the Lion's Paw” & London: “To Build a Fire”
• OpV: #5 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Segal: “Bellamy’s Looking Backward”
• AP Lang: Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”; Wharton: “The Reckoning”; Sui Sin Far: “In the Land of the Free”; Bellamy: Looking Backward, excerpts
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Littlefield: “Wizard of Oz as Populism Parable”
• AP Lang: Baum: “Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse” & “The Capture of Father Time”
• OpV: #8 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Offner: “Why did the U.S. fight Spain in 1898?”
• AP Lang: Modernism Art #1 and #2
• OpV: #12 (v. 2); excerpts from T. Roosevelt, W. Wilson, Taft, and Debs
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Strasser: “Customer, Consumer, Progressive Era”
• AP Lang: O. Henry: “The Trimmed Lamp” & Anderson: “Book of the Grotesque”
• OpV: #14 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Shaffer: “WWI Homefront”
• AP Lang: Lovecraft: “The Outsider” & Smith: “The Abominations of Yondo”
• OpV: #17 (v. 2); Locke: “The New Negro”
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Adams: “The American Dream”; Lewis: “Radio in the 20s and 30s”; Dumenil: “The New Woman”
• AP Lang: Fitzgerald: “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”; Lewis: “The Hack Driver”; Toomer: Cane, excerpts “Fern”
• OpV: #20 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: none
• AP Lang: LeSeur: “Women on the Breadlines” & Faulkner: “Rose for Emily”
• OpV: #22 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Kennedy: “FDR & Hitler”; Bordgwardt: “FDRs Four Freedoms”
• AP Lang: Hemingway: “A Clean, Well Lighted Place” & Thurber: “Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
• OpV: #24 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Litoff & Smith: “Women in WWII”
• AP Lang: Rand: The Fountainhead, excerpts; Capote: “A Tree of Night”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Klein: “When Seuss Went to War”
• AP Lang: Jackson: “The Lottery” & “Charles”
• OpV: #25 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Preston: “Origins of the Cold War”; Ball: “The Cold War Origins of Peanuts”
• AP Lang: The Twilight Zone: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” & Dick: “Foster, You’re Dead”
• OpV: #26 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Nicolaides: “Suburbia and the Sunbelt”; Bodnair: “Unruly Adults: Social Change in the 50s”; Nickerson: “Women, Domesticity, Conservatism”
• AP Lang: Cheever: “The Enormous Radio”; Olsen: “I Stand Here Ironing”; Wilson: Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Ch. 1)
• OpV: #29 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Carson: “MLK and MX”; Carson: “AA Freedom Struggle”; Williams: “Black Women Black Power”; Williams: “Legacy of the Black Panthers”; Wood: “Cold War and Civil Rights”; Powell: “HDT, MLK, American Protest”
• AP Lang: O’Conner: “Everything that Rises Must Converge” & Welty: “Where is the Voice Coming From?”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Herring: “The Cold War and Vietnam”; Heiss: “US Relations with Middle East”; Schulzinger: “End of the Cold War”
• AP Lang: Plath: “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”; O'Brien: “On the Rainy River”; Wolff: In Pharaoh’s Army (excerpts)
• OpV: #32 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Perlstein: “Conservative Victory in the 60s”; Abbott: “Urbanizing the Sunbelt”
• AP Lang: Barthelme: “The Golden Shower” & “The Balloon”; Bisson: “The Toxic Donut”
• OpV: #28 (v. 2)
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Morisi: “Struggle Against Segregation”
• AP Lang: Ellison: “‘Repent Harlequin’ Said the Ticktockman” & Vonnegut: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
• OpV: none
• AP U.S. History Secondary Sources: Ribuffo: “Discovery of Conservatism”; Carter: “Rise of Conservatism since WWII”
• AP Lang: Carver: “Blackbird Pie” & Sontag: “The Way We Live Now”

• American Revolution (3.5) / Gothic and Dark Romanticism

• Influence of Revolutionary Ideas (3.6)

• The Constitution (3.7-3.9)

• The First Party System (3.10-3.11)

• The Age of Jefferson and Madison (4.2-4.3) / Light Romanticism

• Early American Foreign Policy (4.4)

• The Market Revolution (4.5-4.6)

• The Second Party System (4.7-4.8)

• The Marshall Court (see previous blog post)

• The Age of Reform (4.9-4.11) / Transcendentalism

• Slavery in the Early Republic (4.12-4.13)

• Manifest Destiny (5.2-5.3) / Tall Tales, Myths, Legends

• The Third Party System (5.4-5.6)

• Movie Day: In the Heart of the Sea

• The Taney Court (see previous blog post)

• Causes of the Civil War (5.7)

• Secession of the South (5.7)

• The Presidency of Lincoln (5.8-5.9)

• Reconstructing the Union (5.10-5.11)

• Westward Expansion (6.2-6.3, 6.5) / Realism and Naturalism

• The New South (6.4)

• The Rise of Industrial Capitalism (6.6)

• Labor in the Gilded Age (6.7, 6.10)

• Immigration, Urbanization, and Reform (6.8-6.9, 6.11)

• Politics in the Gilded Age (6.12-6.13)

• The Gilded Age Court (see previous blog post)

• New Foreign Policy (7.2-7.3) / Modernism

• The Progressives (7.4)

• The Homefront: WWI (7.5-7.6) / The Weird Tale

• The 1920s (7.7-7.8) / The Harlem Renaissance

• The Depression and New Deal (7.9-7.10) / Reportage

• Interwar Foreign Policy (7.11)

• The Homefront: WWII (7.12-7.13)

• Dr. Seuss Goes to War / WWII Propaganda

• The Cold War (7.14, 8.2) / Postmodernism / Science Fiction

• Post-WWII Economy and Society (8.3, 4, 5)

• The Modern Civil Rights Movement (6.6, 6.10-6.11)

• America as a World Power (8.7-8.8)

• The Great Society (8.9, 8.12-8.13)

• The Warren Court (see previous blog post) / The New Weird

• The Era of Reagan (8.14, 9.2-9.3)