ABSTRACT
Cultural history shares roots with the very well-established discipline of art history. Cultural history today is the examination of “history from the viewpoint of the motives and meanings that individual and collective historical agents from the past gave to whatever they were doing, and to the contexts in which they operated.” This chapter explores the field of cultural history. It highlights some of the special methodological issues in cultural history, and provides some examples of cultural history projects conducted by undergraduate researchers. The chapter provides only an introductory glimpse into the complex world of cultural history, and closes with a short list of resources for further exploration. Cultural history expanded during the mid-1800s and early 1900s as practitioners became increasingly interested in the cultures of the masses, or “popular culture”.
