ABSTRACT

Exploring the central themes in modern American cultural studies and discussing how these themes can be interpreted, American Cultural Studies offers a wide-ranging overview of different aspects of American cultural life such as religion, gender and sexuality, regionalism, and ethnicity and immigration.

The fourth edition has been revised throughout to take into account the developments of the last four years. Updates and revisions include:

  • discussion of Barack Obama’s time in the White House
  • consideration of ‘Hemispheric American Studies’ and the increasing debates about globalisation and the international role of the USA
  • long-form television and American Studies
  • up-to-date case studies, such as Girls, The Wire and Orange is the New Black
  • more material on Detroit, the Mexican border, same-sex relationships and Islam in America
  • updated further reading lists and new follow-up work.

Illustrated throughout, containing follow-up questions and further reading at the end of each chapter, and accompanied by a companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/campbell) providing further study resources, American Cultural Studies is a core text and an accessible guide to the interdisciplinary study of American culture.

chapter |25 pages

New beginnings

American culture and identity

chapter |35 pages

Ethnicity and immigration

Between many worlds

chapter |33 pages

African Americans

‘I don't sing other people's voices’

chapter |31 pages

In God we trust?

Religion in American life

chapter |48 pages

Approaches to regionalism

The West and the South

chapter |31 pages

The American city

‘The old knot of contrariety’

chapter |32 pages

Gender and sexuality

‘To break the old circuits'

chapter |32 pages

Representing youth

Outside the sunken nursery