One of my best friends has been doing American Studies (with History), which is pretty funny because he's from the US. The program sounds really solid, and when I visited I liked the school so much I decided to do a Postgrad degree there (Digital Media). He went to UCLA (in California) for study abroad, we drove across the US to get out there & went wandering in the New Mexico desert. And yeah, it'd make sense for Sussex to be twinned with Berkeley; I describe it to people as the British equivalent.
Good luck!