Contacting American Studies POI's

[phigirl]

I'm applying to 6 different AMST programs for the PhD in Fall 2013, have great grades, etc. from my undergrad, and I've taken a year to fully decide to commit to going to graduate school.

That said, I'm struggling with contacting POIs in this field because unlike some of the hard sciences, etc. it doesn't seem like asking if profs are taking on students is especially helpful-seeing as we're interdisciplinary we could really be talking to progs in a wide range of fields.

So with that said-is there any advice from people who've contacted POIs thus far? What kinds of things did you say? What did you do if there wasn't a core faculty member who matched up with your interests that well?