American Cultural Studies on the Web - General

Comprehensive Guides

American Studies Crossroads--Your gateway for information about American Studies nationally. Sponsored by the ASA. You can find bibliographies, course syllabi, links to many American Studies-related web sites, links to American Studies programs around the globe, and much, much more.

Online Archive of California--Brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections are available. Offering easy-to-use search and viewing tools, the OAC organizes images into thematic and institutional collections, such as historical topics, nature, places, and technology.

Voice of the Shuttle: Web Page for Humanities Research--Constantly updated page at UC Santa Barbara with links to many humanities sites. Try the links under "Cultural Studies," "Media Studies," "Minority Studies," and "Women's Studies, Gender Studies, & Queer Theory."

Index of Resources for United States History--Links to a vast array of online information about US history, arranged by chronological and subject categories. This was one of the first History web sites, originally housed at the University of Kansas. It appears to have been kept up to date.

Historical Text Archive--This is the original online history archive (dating to 1991). It provides original material, links to other sites, and electronic reprints of books organized by topics.

EdSiteMent: The Best of the Humanities on the Web--Divided by general topic: Arts & Culture, Literature and Language Arts, Foreign Languages, and History & Social Science. Selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Includes advice, information, and lesson plans for public school teachers who want to integrate these resources into their classroom.

Berkeley Digital SunSITE--Includes well-selected links to give you tools for finding what you want (links to many online catalogs & indexes), to help you find text and image collections, and to find guides, advice, and software for constructing your own digital library or web site.

History Matters--American Social History Project web site designed to enrich teaching of U.S. social history survey coures at high school and college levels. Click on "browse" to gain access to primary source documents, teaching assignments that use existing Web resources, annotated syllabi, interactive exercises, and more.

Common-Place: Interactive Journal of Early American Life--Brings together historians and history buffs, high school teachers and archivists, collectors and college students, to explore and exchange ideas about American history. Its essays and reviews, along with its on-line discussion board, provide a forum for examining the story of America as it is told not only in history books and college classrooms but also in newspapers, museums, historical societies, popular culture, documentary and dramatic films and on television and radio. Well worth exploring.

Full-text of American Studies/American History Scholarly Journals

American Quarterly (1996- )--Full-text of articles from recent issues of the leading American Studies journal. To access the articles you must be an ASA member or validate yourself as a CSUF student or faculty member. All computers on the CSUF campus network can access this site.

JSTOR: Back Issues of Major Journals--Full-text of articles from back issues of  the American Quarterly, Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, Journal of Southern History, William & Mary Quarterly, American Historical Review as well as many others archived by JSTOR. To access the articles you must validate yourself as a CSUF student or faculty member. All computers on the CSUF campus network can access this site.

Archives of Digitized Images, Sound Recordings, and Movies

American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress--Primary source and archival materials from the Library of Congress's holdings relating to American culture and history. Includes prints, photographs, documents, motion pictures, and sound recordings. A cultural treasure house.

National Archives and Records Administration--Entry point for research utilizing the vast resources of the National Archives.

NYPL Digital Gallery--Provides free access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

Berkeley Digital Library Image Finder--You can search 11 different collections of digital images (primarily photographs) from this one site. Library of Congress and Smithsonian collections are among those you can search.

Images of American Political History--Over 500 public domain maps (territorial expansion, presidential elections) and images (photographs and cartoons).

Archives of Full-Text Sources

Making of America (1850-1877)--An on-line data base created by scholars at the University of Michigan library provides a close look at the culture of 19th-century America. The data base contains the full text of hundreds of books and other publications from 1850-1877. In addition to providing providing accounts of everyday life, topics such as slavery, westward expansion, and the military are heavily represented. So far, the archive contains more than 200,000 pages of material. The project's organizers plan eventually to include 1.5 million pages.

Hypertexts from Univ. of Virginia--Excellent full-text collection of classic American literature. Also includes extensive links to other full-text collections of American writing. This collection is especially rich on Mark Twain. Contains the full texts of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Puddn'head Wilson, Connecticut Yankee, and Innocents Abroad, but also selections on "Marketing Twain," on how Sam Clemens became Mark Twain, and a collection of his lectures and after-dinner speeches. Other classic American literature in full-text at this site includes Winesburg, Ohio, Looking Backward, The Jungle, The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Studies in Classic American Literature, Theory of the Leisure Class, The Oregon Trail, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Walden, Our Nig, Journals of Lewis and Clark, Sister Carrie, Confidence Man, Democracy in America, Virgin Land (Henry Nash Smith), and selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives. A separate page identifies texts by or about African Americans.

Periodicals Online--Resources for Research--Research Society for American Periodicals listing of magazines and newspapers that are available online, 18th century to 21st century. Links to important resources for studying magazine history and publishing.

Project Bartleby Archive--Includes W.E.B Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk, Emily Dickinson, Poems, Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the U.S., selected works by Theodore Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, and Strunk and White, The Elements of Style.

OFCN Electronic Bookshelf--Popular American and English novels which are in the public domain.  Includes works by Horatio Alger, Mary Austin, L. Frank Baum, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Harold Frederic, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Jack London, Frank Norris, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton.

Project Gutenberg--Enormous selection of "fine literature digitally re-published." Many American selections. Well worth a visit.

American Studies Theory & Method

Theory and Method in American/Cultural Studies--Series of short essays and annotated bibliographies by T. V. Reed for his graduate student course at Washington State University. Includes history of the movement, myth & symbol, interpretive social science, semiotics, and material culture, neo-marxisms & cultural materialisms, post-structuralist theories, theorizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity & sexuality, historical theories & methods, literary theories & methods, British cultural studies, and postcolonial & transnational theories. Also contains links to other theory and method courses.