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A Guide to American Culture Studies

This page brings together various information resources on the subject of American Culture Studies

Reference Works - A Place to Begin

Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, eds. Keywords for American Cultural Studies (2nd ed., 2014) - an invaluable resource for understanding key terms and debates in the fields of American studies and cultural studies. Designed as a print-digital hybrid publication, Keywords collects more than 90 essays - 30 of which are new to this edition - from interdisciplinary scholars, each on a single term such as "America," "culture," "law," and "religion." Alongside "community," "prison," "queer," "region," and many others, these words are the nodal points in many of today's most dynamic and vexed discussions of political and social life, both inside and outside of the academy.

Oxford Bibliographies - provides faculty and students alike with a seamless pathway to the most accurate and reliable resources for a variety of academic topics. Written and reviewed by academic experts, every article in our database is an authoritative guide to the current scholarship, containing original commentary and annotations.

Many encyclopedias

many a bibliography

 

 

Journal Article Databases

Subject-specific eJournal collections

America: History & Life (1964-)  - a complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Published since 1964, the database comprises almost 400,000 bibliographic entries.

Multidisciplinary Academic Journal databases

Google Scholar vs. Primo

JSTOR vs. Academic Search Complete

Primary Sources

Newspapers

American Periodicals: Newspapers & Magazines from the LibGuide to American History "Articles" tab

Chronicling America - over 1000 full-text U.S. newspaper titles from 46 states & Puerto Rico published between 1793-1963 (as of 8/30/18)

The subject headings of most U.S. newspapers take the form of "City (state abbreviation) -- newspapers" such as Saint Louis (Mo.) -- Newspapers. However, the St. Louis Argus was once cataloged as African Americans -- Missouri -- Newspapers and has two catalog records: one for microform and one for the digitized version, the latter of which does not appear under that subject heading. This is another reason why it is good to experiment with keywords and subject headings and not to rely on one at the exclusion of the other.

Newspapers.com - available through SLPL; historical newspapers from the early 1700s into the early 2000s. It contains a diverse blend of well-known regional and local newspapers in the US and other countries, including the St. Louis Globe Democrat (published 1852-1986; digitized 1863-1963).

Music, Film, Theater, etc.

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive An archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are all included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews.

Film and Television Literature Index a comprehensive bibliographic database covering the entire spectrum of television and film writing. It has been designed for use by a diverse audience that includes film scholars, college students, and general viewers. Subject coverage includes film and television theory, preservation and restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.

Performing Arts Periodical Database A performing arts journal resource with nearly 300,000 indexed articles, plus detailed abstracts and full text from 1864 to current, covering film, theatre and dance.

Readers’ Guide Retrospective (1890-1982) Use this to find contemporary magazine reviews of movies.

Music Periodicals Database provides indexing and abstracts for several hundred international music periodicals from over 20 countries, plus full text for more than 140 of the indexed journals. The database currently includes over 1.3 million records, the majority from the most recent ten years of publication. Some complete journal runs are included, with indexing back to 1874. Covers the full spectrum of subjects and all aspects of music, including music education, performance, ethnomusicology, musical theatre, theory, popular music forms and composition.

Rock's Backpages is an online archive of music journalism, sourced from freelance contributions to the music and mainstream press from the 1950s to the present day.

Government Documents

Legislative Insight (1929 - ) - contains over 18,000 federal legislative histories with digital full text publications covering laws from 1929 to present. For federal laws between 1969 and current, coverage will be similar to ProQuest Congressional. This database provides legislative histories for 10,000 laws passed between 1929 and 1968 that are not in ProQuest Congressional.
Monthly Catalogue of U.S. Government Publications (1895-1976) - issued each month by the Superintendent of Documents for the Government Printing Office and catalogs all publications of the United States government, including those of the Congress and all executive departments (with the exception of administrative and confidential or restricted documents). Records for all publications since July 1976 have been available online at the GPO's website, but this version makes all issues of the Monthly Catalog from 1895 to June 1976 available online.
ProQuest Congressional - comprehensive access to U.S. legislative information. Includes: CIS Legislative Histories (public laws back to 1969), Congressional publications (1817 - ), testimony from Congressional hearings (1824-), Congressional Record and Federal Register, U.S. Serial Set, 1789-1969, Serial Set Maps, 1789-1969, and more.

U. S. Declassified Documents Online selected previously classified government documents ranging from the years immediately following World War II, when declassified documents were first made widely available, through the 1970s. Search by name, date, word, or phrase, or focus on document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, date declassified, sanitization, completeness, number of pages, and document number. Nearly every major foreign and domestic event of these years is covered: the Cold War, Vietnam, foreign policy shifts, the civil rights movement, and others.