A Companion to American Cultural History

In the past few decades, the field of American cultural history has emerged as a central area of interest for American historians. The field now embraces a holistic concept of “culture” as the entire range of practices, representations, languages, and beliefs that make up a particular society’s way of life. A Companion to American Cultural History offers a historiographic overview of the scholarship, with special attention to the major studies and debates that have shaped the field, and an assessment of where it is currently headed. Primarily intended for cultural historians and students, the book will also appeal to all readers interested in the significant impact the burgeoning field of cultural history has made on American history scholarship.

Notes on Contributors. Introduction (Karen Halttunen). Part I: Early America. 1. Cultural Encounters: Americans and Europeans (Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California). 2. Cultures of Colonial Settlement (Carla Gardina Pestana, Miami University). 3. British America in the Eighteenth Century (Karin Wulf, The College of William and Mary). 4. The Revolution and the Early Republic (Catherine E. Kelly, University of Oklahoma). Part II: The Nineteenth Century. 5. Antebellum Cultural History (James W. Cook, University of Michigan). 6. Religion and Reform (Lewis Perry, St. Louis University). 7. African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Demetrius L. Eudell, Wesleyan University). 8. The Civil War in American Culture (Alice Fahs, University of California, Irvine). 9. The West (Ann Fabian, Rutgers University). 10. The Gilded Age (Scott A. Sandage, Carnegie Mellon University). 11. Immigration and Ethnic Culture (Hasia R. Diner, New York University). 12. Cultural Watersheds in Fin de Siécle America (Janet M. Davis, University of Texas, Austin). Part III: The Twentieth Century. 13. Consumer Culture and Mass Culture (Charles F. McGovern, The College of William and Mary). 14. Modernism (Joel Dinerstein, Tulane University). 15. Politics and Culture in the 1930s and 1940s (Julia L. Foulkes, The New School). 16. The 1950s and 1960s (Daniel Belgrad, University of South Florida). 17. The Globalization of American Culture (Petra Goedde, Temple University). Part IV: Thematic and Methodological Approaches. 18. Cultural Theory, Dialogue, and American Cultural History (George Lipsitz, University of California, Santa Barbara). 19. Situating Visual Culture (Sally M. Promey, University of Maryland, College Park). 20. Material Cultures (J. Ritchie Garrison, University of Delaware). 21. Performance and Display (M. Alison Kibler, Franklin & Marshall College). 22. Gender and Sexuality (Jane H. Hunter, Lewis and Clark College). 23. Race and Ethnicity (Eric Avila, University of California, Los Angeles). 24. Popular Culture (Nan Enstad, University of Wisconsin, Madison). 25. History and Memory (David Glassberg, University of Massachusetts, Amherst). Part V: The Cultural Turn in Other Fields. 26. Culturalist Approaches to Intellectual History (Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University). 27. The Impact of the Culture Concept on Social History (Lawrence B. Glickman, University of South Carolina). 28. Religious History and the Cultural Turn (Leigh E. Schmidt, Princeton University). 29. Political History and the Tool of Culture (Joanne B. Freeman, Yale University). 30. The Cultural History of Foreign Relations (Andrew J. Rotter, Colgate University).

Karen Halttunen is Professor of History and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and former president of the American Studies Association. She is the author of Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle–Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (1986) and Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination (2000).

"The thirty bibliographies of the most influential work in American cultural history would by themselves make the hook very helpful to a wide audience. But the essays′ historiographical and thematic overviews provide the most valuable contribution, for each essay is aimed squarely at the ways that the best works in the field have been in conversation with each other." ( A Journal of Southern History, February 2010) "A monumental achievement. The breadth of coverage is staggering, and the depth of insight a credit to its multifarious authors. Rarely can one book offer so much." ( Reviews in History , April 2009) “This excellent reader in US cultural history for undergraduates may also be useful to specialists as a general overview of the field as it has evolved, especially over the past four decades. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.” ( CHOICE , March 2009) "A guide for scholars and students who are interested in developments over the past quarter–century … .No reader should come away from it without a good springboard to further study. It is an apitite–whetter, a conspectus and a guide." ( Reference Reviews , January 2009)