Abstract
This paper posits that documentary films may help break the pedagogical habit of relying on unwieldy combinations of printed texts to teach American Studies. Discussing the content, techniques, strengths and weaknesses of each film reveals the ways they all transcend their immediate subjects and engage such multiple American Studies themes and questions as race, ethnicity, gender, class, region, popular culture, the American Dream myth, individualism, community, or broad historical periods such as the post-World War II era or the Reagan/Bush 1980s. While some of the documentaries celebrate American individualism, others reveal the tensions between artists and the social/cultural systems that can limit them. Most importantly, all five of these films themselves constitute interdisciplinary texts, proving that a subject can receive complicated treatment even through a single “teachable text,” as long as that text employs a broad lens.