ABSTRACT
I trace my lineage in American Studies back to no traditional training. I did not sit at the feet of one of the inspiring practitioners in one of the great programmes at Yale or Minnesota. And though I am, somewhat inadvertently, the grandchild of one of the masters, my intellectual roots and passion for our discipline came initially from outside the mainstream of American Studies – from exploring the history of labour and of women and gender. Both have been contested arenas within American history partly because of their propensity towards interdisciplinarity and partly because each is bound to a political trajectory or movement. Both have found comfortable homes in American Studies, participating in the successful efforts of a generation of scholars to alter the meaning of ‘American culture’ or ‘culture studies’ to reflect subjective and vernacular experience as well as artistic and literary commentary on it. The lineage I trace draws on the politics and the insights of three decades of flux in American Studies. But it also reflects the intersection of politics with the life of the mind that has simultaneously tormented and inspired a generation of Americanists who work within the USA.
