British studies

British studies is the academic study of Britain — its culture, geography and history.

Not to be confused with English studies.

Britain is significant as a topic because it was the location of the industrial revolution; the British Empire was large and influential in world history; and English is now a major international language. The topic is especially studied in the USA as students there often have a heritage of British ancestry which encourages Anglophilia while the shared language of English makes British culture readily accessible.[1]

In Germany, the topic is a specialism of Kulturkunde and Landeskunde and there is a Journal for the Study of British Cultures.[2]

A course was started at the University of Texas in 1975 and, more recently, courses have started at other universities such as Columbia, Yale[1] and the Faculty of World Studies at University of Tehran.[3]

References
  1. Zoë Corbyn (2 May 2011), "British studies, the latest import from the US?", The Guardian
  2. Michael Payne; Jessica Rae Barbera (2010), A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, pp. 253–255, ISBN 978-1-4051-6890-8
  3. http://fws.ut.ac.ir/ltr/Groups.aspx?Ind=-1&Id=112&LanId=2 Archived 2015-05-21 at the Wayback Machine | University of Tehran, Faculty of British Studies

Further reading
  • Alan Mountford; Nick Wadham-Smith (2000), British studies: intercultural perspectives, Longman, ISBN 978-0-582-42962-8
  • Lidia Kyzlinková; Stephen Hardy; Milada Franková (2002), British studies: a reader, Masarykova univerzita, ISBN 978-80-210-2894-4


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