In many Swedish English departments today, the majority of our students study English as part of teacher education. This context is often discussed as a problem, characterized by lack of time to develop subject knowledge, competing demands of subject and pedagogical content, and sometimes also connected to a lack in intellectual engagement on the part of our students. In this presentation, I will instead focus on the ways in which teacher education can create a context that makes aspect of teaching American culture particularly rewarding, through the framing of certain issues as central to the democratic mission of the Swedish school. The presentation will explore these possibilities through a course module called “In/Equality in American Culture and Society” that is offered as part of students’ third term of English and seventh term in the program for upper secondary school teachers at Örebro University. I will both address methods developed to teach from the microcosm (a term coined by Elaine Showalter) of nonfiction texts to address larger and historically complex ideas and developments, and the role of inter- or transcultural language teaching as a productive way of integrating pedagogical content in a way that positively affects students’ way of relating to the American studies content of the course. The presentation will also highlight the challenges that remain, mainly those related to selection of materials.