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 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)

• Notes on Contributors viiiIntroduction xiKaren HalttunenPart I Early America 11. Cultural Encounters: Americans and Europeans 3Peter C. Mancall2. Cultures of Colonial Settlement 17Carla Gardina Pestana3. British America in the Eighteenth Century 32Karin Wulf4. The Revolution and the Early Republic 46Catherine E. KellyPart II The Nineteenth Century 635. Antebellum Cultural History 65James W. Cook6. Religion and Reform 79Lewis Perry7. Black Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 95Demetrius L. Eudell8. The Civil War in American Culture 110Alice Fahs9. The West 125Ann Fabian10. The Gilded Age 139Scott A. Sandage11. Immigration and Ethnic Culture 154Hasia R. Diner12. Cultural Watersheds in Fin de Siècle America 166Janet M. DavisPart III The Twentieth Century 18113. Consumer Culture and Mass Culture 183Charles F. McGovern14. Modernism 198Joel Dinerstein15. Politics and Culture in the 1930s and 1940s 214Julia L. Foulkes16. The 1950s and 1960s 230Daniel Belgrad17. The Globalization of American Culture 246Petra GoeddePart IV Thematic and Methodological Approaches 26318. Cultural Theory, Dialogue, and American Cultural History 265George Lipsitz19. Situating Visual Culture 279Sally M. Promey20. Material Cultures 295J. Ritchie Garrison21. Performance and Display 311M. Alison Kibler22. Gender and Sexuality 327Jane H. Hunter23. Race and Ethnicity 341Eric Avila24. Popular Culture 356Nan Enstad25. History and Memory 371David GlassbergPart V The Cultural Turn in Other Fields 38126. Culturalist Approaches to Intellectual History 383Casey Nelson Blake27. The Impact of the Culture Concept on Social History 396Lawrence B. Glickman28. Religious History and the Cultural Turn 406Leigh E. Schmidt29. Political History and the Tool of Culture 416Joanne B. Freeman30. The Cultural History of Foreign Relations 425Andrew J. RotterIndex 437