A Companion to American Cultural History - Paperback

by Karen Halttunen (Editor)

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.

• 30 essays explore the history of American culture at all analytic levels
• Written by scholarly experts well-versed in the questions and controversies that have activated interest in this burgeoning field
• Part of the authoritative Blackwell Companions to American History series
• Provides both a chronological and thematic approach: topics range from British America in the Eighteenth Century to the modern day globalization of American Culture; thematic approaches include gender and sexuality and popular culture

Front Jacket

The thirty bibliographies of the most influential work in American cultural history would by themselves make the book 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 appetite-whetter, a conspectus and a guide. (Reference Reviews, January 2009)

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.

Back Jacket

"The thirty bibliographies of the most influential work in American cultural history would by themselves make the book 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 appetite-whetter, a conspectus and a guide." (Reference Reviews, January 2009)

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.

Author Biography

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).