The AMCS program strongly encourages its majors to take on a second major in a related field.
Central to American Culture Studies is the idea of "multidisciplinary" approaches: a good understanding of American culture can be gained only by the simultaneous application of methods from a variety of disciplines. Potentially appropriate disciplines range across the humanities and social sciences.
One cannot master multidisciplinary approaches without mastering disciplinary ones. The purpose of the Disciplinary Foundations requirement is to point AMCS majors in the right direction by requiring them to engage in serious basic work on the main approaches of some traditional discipline related to their Concentrations. Even better, in our view, is for the student to have a second major, undertaking deeper mastery of that discipline's approaches and assumptions while studying, through AMCS, how to combine its approaches with those of other disciplines.
Accordingly, AMCS students graduating with a second major will be regarded as automatically satisfying the 9-credit Disciplinary Foundations requirement, and will be required to complete only the remaining 30 credits of the AMCS requirements.