American Studies Digital Library

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49th Parallel
 An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies

Abstracts of Dissertations in American Studies - (dead link) From American Studies Association

America at Work / America at Leisure, 1894-1915
"Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures, 88 of which are digitized for the first time (62 are also available in other American Memory presentations). Highlights include films of the United States Postal Service from 1903, cattle breeding, fire fighters, ice manufacturing, logging, calisthenic and gymnastic exercises in schools, amusement parks, boxing, expositions, football, parades, swimming, and other sporting events."
American Memory, Library of Congress

America's Second Harvest

  • Hunger in America 2001 - (dead link)
    "...the most comprehensive study of domestic hunger ever undertaken."

American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
Founded in 1995 by Lynne Cheney

  • Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It - (dead link) [.pdf]
    "In response, [to September 11] ACTA has established the Defense of Civilization Fund to support the study of American history and civics and of Western civilization...The report calls on college and university trustees to make sure their institutions offer strong core curricula that pass on to the next generation the legacy of freedom and democracy."
    The report names more than 100 individual professors who have said or written what the ACTA deems as exhibiting a "blame America first" sentiment.
    • See "Academic freedom is under attack since Sept. 11, some professors say," - (dead link) Article by Stuart Eskenazi, Seattle Times, 12/16/01
  • Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century - (dead link) [.pdf]

The American Experience
PBS Online

American Heritage Virtual Archive Project
A Prototype "Virtual Archive" of Encoded Finding Aids
"will investigate one of the most serious problems facing knowledge seekers everywhere, the geographic distribution of both collections of primary source material and the written guides describing and providing access to them. We propose to solve this problem by creating a prototype 'virtual archive', integrating into a single source, hundreds of archival finding aids describing and providing access to a large body of primary source materials from collections documenting American culture and history held by four major academic research libraries [Duke University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Virginia]. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of providing both scholars and average American citizens with user-friendly, universal Internet access to the research collections of the world."

American Museum of the Moving Image

  • The Living Room Candidate - (dead link)
    A History of Presidential Campaign Commercials, 1952-2000

The American Prospect (TAP)
"...is to contribute to a renewal of America's democratic traditions by presenting a practical and convincing vision of liberal philosophy, politics, and public life. We publish articles for the general reader that attempt to break through conventional understanding and creatively reframe public questions."

American Quarterly

American Studies Association Newsletter - (dead link)

  • "American Studies in East Africa" - (dead link)
    American Studies Association Newsletter, June 2000
    By Allan M. Winkler

American Studies in Europe Newsletter - (dead link)

American Studies Today On-line - (dead link)

  • "American Studies in the Czech Republic" - (dead link)
    Stepanka Korytova-Magstadt and Jitka Ramadanova, Zapadoceska University in Plzen, Czech Republic
  • "How well is American Studies doing in Britain today?" - (dead link) Conclusion of a 1998 questionnaire

An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
"...is a rich repository of Americana containing, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards. There are more than 28,000 items in the collection overall. The material dates from the seventeenth century to the present day and covers innumerable topics."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

American Women
A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States
"The site contains a slightly expanded and fully searchable version of the print publication American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2001)."
Sections include: General Collections ; Serial & Government Publications ; Law Library ; Rare Books & Special Collections ; Manuscripts ; Prints & Photographs ; Geography and Maps ; Music ; Recorded Sound ; Moving Images ; American Folklife Center ; Area Studies ; Collections ; Topical Essays.
- American Memory, Library of Congress

BAAS Postgraduate Online Journal - (dead link)
From British Association for American Studies

California Electricity Energy Crisis
"The information shown below provides a quick-reference guide to the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) data sources related to the California electicity crisis. The publications cited are developed from data collected from respondents to various electricity surveys managed by the EIA, as well as information on the California Power Exchange and ISO. Products from EIA's Natural Gas Division are also provided."

The California Latino Demographic Databook
"By 2005, more than a third of all Californians are projected to be Latino. The portrait of California Latinos in the California Latino Demographic Databook addresses the characteristics of this growing population, detailing characteristics for Latinos by national origin, nativity, citizenship, and period of entry for the foreign-born, and providing comparative figures for non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Asians.
California Policy Research Center

Censored: Wielding The Red Pen
"This exhibition hopes not so much to judge censors and censorship but instead to provoke questions."
Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library

Christian Science Monitor

The Columbia Gazetteer of North America
"With 50,000 entries, this most comprehensive encyclopedia of geographical places and features will prove invaluable to anyone for whom places hold fascination and who require accurate data about them. It covers every incorporated place and county in the United States, along with several thousand unincorporated places, special-purpose sites, and physical features, as well as Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean."
Edited by Saul B. Cohen
Originally published by Columbia University Press, 2000 this online edition by Bartleby.com, 2001.

Dance in America: Free to Dance
"Explore the "Free To Dance" Web companion, which offers information about the series, a dance timeline, essays on dance history and the African-American contribution to modern dance, biographies of notable dance personalities, links to relevant dance resources online, and more."
PBS Online - Great Performances (June 2000)

Diversity Database - (dead link)
"This database contains campus, local, national, and international academic material relating to the following areas of diversity as defined by the Office of Human Relations Programs at the University of Maryland: age, class, disability, ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, religion & sexual orientation."
University of Maryland

Documenting the American South (DAS) - (dead link)
A Digitized Library of Southern Literature, Beginnings to 1920.
"...an electronic collection sponsored by the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research...Currently, DAS includes five digitization projects: slave narratives, first-person narratives, Southern literature, Confederate imprints, and materials related to the church in the black community."

The Economic Report of the President - (dead link) (February 2002)

Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
"...presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture."

Federal Bureau of Investigation

  • Uniform Crime Reports - (dead link)

Federal Trade Commission

Fifty Years of Coca-Cola Television Advertisements
Highlights from the Motion Picture Archives
"...presents a variety of television advertisements, never-broadcast outtakes, and experimental footage reflecting the historical development of television advertising for a major commercial product."
American Memory, Library of Congress

Harvard Business School Baker Library - (dead link)

  • Baker Library Historical Collections - (dead link)
    • 19th Century American Trade Card - (dead link)
      "...cataloging and digitization of 1,000 trade cards that are representative of our collections and of the genre itself."
    • Unheard Voices: American Women in the Emerging Industrial and Business Age - (dead link)
      "A Survey of the Baker Manuscript Collections for the Role of Women in Business, 1700-1920."
      "The online guide that follows is the first of these research tools to be available to scholars, providing both information on the materials that were identified within the manuscript collections, as well as a bibliography of secondary resources."

Herblock's History
Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium
"From the stock market crash in 1929 through the new millennium beginning in the year 2000, editorial cartoonist Herb Block has chronicled the nation's political history, caricaturing twelve American presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton. He has received three Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning (1942, 1954, and 1979) and a fourth with Washington Post colleagues for public service during the Watergate investigation (1973)."
Library of Congress

Human Rights Watch Reports

Hypertexts
"A major objective is to make ourselves useful by providing free access to three kinds of texts: Classic Texts...Lost Texts...Fully Hypertexts...Our primary objective, however, has been to learn about American Culture(s) by simultanesly [sic] exploring the new technologies..."
American Studies, University of Virginia

IndUS Business Journal
"...is the only newspaper that focuses on the business and cultural interests of the Indo- American community."

JAST - Journal of American Studies of Turkey

July 1942: United We Stand
Online gallery of magazine covers from the flag-cover campaign of July 1942.
Smithsonian - National Museum of American History

[Summary Results From] The Latino Ethnic Attitude Survey (LEAS) - (dead link)
Conducted by Daniel L. Roy, Dept. of Geography, University of Kansas

Korean American Digital Archive - (dead link)
"...aimed at bringing disparate collections of materials--manuscripts, documents, photographs, oral histories--together in one searchable database. The initial collection of more than 11,000 pages of documents and over 1300 photographs will continue to grow as additional materials are identified for inclusion."
University of Southern California Libraries

The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections

Life Magazine Online

Lift Every Voice : Music in American Life
Includes: Ballads ; Hymns & Spirituals ; Patriotic Odes ; Minstrels & Musicals ; Protest Songs ; Virginiana ; Audio Clips."
- University of Virginia Library

Los Angeles--A City in Stress - (dead link)
"Growing out of Los Angeles--A City in Stress, this project involves bringing up on the Web a series of full text documents dealing with the manifold problems of Los Angeles in the 1990's with emphasis on the civil disturbances of April and May 1992."
- University of Southern California Libraries

Mickle Street Review
An Electronic Journal of Whitman and American Studies
Part of the Camden Online Poetry Project

Movie Collection: Internet Moving Images Archive
"This collection contains movies that the Prelinger Archives has digitized (about 750 now online) and donated to the Internet Archive. The films focus mainly on everyday life, culture, industry, and institutions in North America in the 20th century ... This is the first time that most of the films have been available to the public."
Internet Archive

National Academy Press (free online versions)

The New Criterion
"...The New Criterion has emerged as America's foremost voice of critical dissent in the culture wars now raging throughout the Western world. A staunch defender of the values of high culture, The New Criterion is also an articulate scourge of artistic mediocrity and intellectual mendacity wherever they are found: in the universities, the art galleries, the media, the concert halls, the theater, and elsewhere."

Newsweek - The Arrogant Empire
Cover story, March 24, 2003.
"America's unprecedented power scares the world, and the Bush administration has only made it worse. How we got here-and what we can do about it."

nthposition.com (electronic journal)
"...is a free online magazine/ezine with politics & opinion, travel writing, fiction & poetry, reviews & interviews, and some high weirdness."

The Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Books and Periodicals
"This collection comprises books and periodicals published in the United States during the nineteenth century, primarily during the second half of the century. Most of the materials were digitized through the Making of America project, a collaboration of Cornell University and the University of Michigan to preserve textual materials on deteriorating paper and make them accessible electronically. The materials selected illuminate the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Also included are volumes of American poetry."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

PBS - Endgame: Ethics & Values in America
"This groundbreaking special enables viewers to enter the lives of fictional characters forced to make critical decisions with profound moral, ethical or social implications. Endgame: Ethics and Values in America fuses the media of dramatic film, interactivity on the Internet, sync-to-broadcast technology, and live television with a studio audience. Viewers are empowered to confront those gray areas of human experience where serious moral and ethical choices are made."

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

  • What the World Thinks in 2002 (December 2002)
    How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, The World, America
    "Despite an initial outpouring of public sympathy for America following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, discontent with the United States has grown around the world over the past two years. Images of the U.S. have been tarnished in all types of nations: among longtime NATO allies, in developing countries, in Eastern Europe and, most dramatically, in Muslim societies."

PopPolitics
e-zine Commentary on Popular and Political Cultures

Population & Racial/Ethnic Distributions, 1930-2000 - Los Angeles County Map Series
 Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, UCLA

Population Studies Center
University of Michigan

Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore
"Charles Moore's unforgettable images helped put public opinion solidly behind the civil rights movement. Seldom, if ever, has a set of photographs had such an immediate impact on the course of history."

The Rap Dictionary
By Patrick Atoon

SiteScene Review - (dead link) "SiteScene features reviews of new web-based resources in American Studies."

Smithsonian Institution

Teaching Evolution in the States
By Lawrence S. Lerner, Prof. Emeritus, California State University, Long Beach
Published by The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 2000.

TRAC: FBI
"The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) is a data gathering, data research and data distribution organization associated with Syracuse University."

United States Code
"The United States Code is prepared and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives. This database contains the general and permanent laws of the United States."

U.S. Census Bureau Publications - See Statistics - U.S. Census Bureau

U.S. Department of Defense - DefenseLINK

  • DoD USS Cole Commission Report (January 9, 2001) - (dead link)
    "The attack on USS COLE (DDG 67), in the port of Aden, Yemen, on 12 October 2000, demonstrated a seam in the fabric of efforts to protect our forces, namely in-transit forces. Our review was focused on finding ways to improve the US policies and practices for deterring, disrupting and mitigating terrorist attack on US forces in transit."

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Conference of Mayors

  • "A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities 2000" - (dead link) (January 2001) [.pdf]

United States Historical Census Data Browser

An Urban Ethnography of Latino Street
Gangs in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties

The Urban Institute

  • Teen Risk-Taking: A Statistical Portrait - (dead link) [.pdf]
  • Changes in Risk-Taking among High School Students, 1991-1997:... - (dead link) [.pdf]
  • Youth Crime Drop - (dead link) (December 2000)
    By Jeffrey A. Butts
  • Assessing the New Federalism
     "...a multi-year Urban Institute research project to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, job training, and social services."
    • National Survey of America's Families
       "...provides a comprehensive look at the well-being of adults and children and reveals sometimes striking differences among the 13 states studied in depth. The survey provides quantitative measures of the quality of life in America. It pays particular attention to low-income families."

The Warren Report - (dead link)
Includes : The Complete Report ; Selection of Testimonies ; Mrs. Marina Oswald Testifies Before the Commission ; Article on a Commission Member Who May have Changed His Mind.
From Bergen County [NJ] Education and Development Center

WorkingPapers - (dead link)
An Electronic Journal By and For Graduate Students of Cultural Studies

Discussion Lists

american-studies discussion list - (dead link)
Open list for primarily UK academics working in American Studies

H-USA Discussion Network
"...encourages international study of the USA and makes available diverse bibliographical, research and teaching aids."
The site also includes a listing of Internet resources.

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