American Cultural and Intellectual

What counts as intellectual history? Who should be considered an intellectual? What is culture? Does the United States have a distinctive culture? A plurality? How have Americans' diverse ethnic, racial, gender, class, and religious identities shaped U.S. intellectual life and culture?

How have colonialism, imperialism, and globalization affected U.S. intellectual and cultural history, and vice versa? Should U.S. cultural and intellectual history be considered transnationally, as phenomena deeply marked by diasporic, borderlands, Atlantic World, Pacific Rim, and other connections? Should U.S. cultural and intellectual history be considered in comparative context, alongside the histories of other states founded by European colonists, such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina? When should we speak of cultural imperialism? Of cultural transfer? How have the concepts and practices of related disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, economics and literary criticism influenced the history of U.S. intellectual and cultural life? How has this history been shaped by capitalism and its various political-economic and cultural critiques? How have different streams of "high" and "popular" culture informed one another? How have analyses of narrative and metanarrative affected cultural analysis? And how can the study of intellectual trends and culture help us understand the dynamics of power?

Questions like these animate the diverse and dynamic faculty and students who focus on issues of U.S. intellectual and cultural history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We approach the field of American cultural and intellectual history from a wide range of perspectives. We consider traditional intellectual and cultural history topics such as religion, literature, and science in light of more recent interrogations of the very categories of "culture" and "intellect." We approach this field through the lenses of ethnic studies, critical race theory, and the study of colonial and postcolonial cultures. We are engaged with cultural studies focusing on popular cultures and their reception; material culture and its uses. We investigate culture as a field of contest, analyze diverse forms of cultural work, and research cross-cultural contact within and outside the borders of the United States. We are interested in issues of race, gender, class, nationality, and transnationality; human possibility, identity, and power. This range of scholarship and teaching interests provides multiple points of entry for students interested in the study of U.S. culture and intellectual life.

The following faculty members within the History department provide a range of courses in the field of U.S. Cultural and Intellectual History.

Students interested in comparative or transnational cultural history should consult Cultural and Intellectual graduate field of study, which provides information on faculty members specializing in cultural history in other parts of the world.

In addition, students are encouraged to seek out relevant, complementary courses in departments with curricula that relate to the themes of our U.S. Cultural and Intellectual History field:

Department of Anthropology, the Department of English, the Department of Art History, the Department of Landscape Architecture, and the Institute of Communications Research.

The following programs also provide valuable resources for the study of U.S. cultural and intellectual history: