The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture

Christopher Bigsby

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780521841320
• eBook ISBN: 9781107481336
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture offers a comprehensive, authoritative and accessible overview of the cultural themes and intellectual issues that drive the dominant culture of the twentieth century. This companion explores the social, political and economic forces that have made America what it is today. It shows how these contexts impact upon twentieth-century American literature, cinema and art. An international team of contributors examines the special contribution of African Americans and of immigrant communities to the variety and vibrancy of modern America. The essays range from art to politics, popular culture to sport, immigration and race to religion and war. Varied, extensive and challenging, this Companion is essential reading for students and teachers of American studies around the world. It is the most accessible and useful introduction available to an exciting range of topics in modern American culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Chronology
• 1 Introduction: What, then, is the American?
• 2 The American century
• 3 The regions and regionalism
• 4 Immigration to the United States in the twentieth century
• 5 Religion in the United States in the twentieth century: 1900–1960
• 6 Shifting boundaries: religion and the United States: 1960 to the present
• 7 The Hispanic background of the United States
• 8 African Americans since 1900
• 9 Asian Americans
• 10 Women in the twentieth century
• 11 Queer America
• 12 The United States, war, and the twentieth century
• 13 The culture of the Cold War
• 14 Secret America: the CIA and American culture
• 15 Vietnam and the 1960s
• 16 New York City and the struggle of the modern
• 17 Music: sound: technology
• 18 African American music of the twentieth century
• 19 Hollywood cinema
• 20 Popular culture
• 21 Theatre
• 22 Society and the novel in twentieth-century America
• 23 “Preferring the wrong way”: mapping the ethical diversity of US twentieth-century poetry
• Index