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American Studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, history, society, and culture. It traditionally incorporates literary criticism, historiography and critical theory. Scholarship in American studies focuses on the United States. In the past decades, however, it has also broadened to include Atlantic history and interactions with countries across the globe. Subjects studied within the field are varied, but often examine the literary themes, histories of American communities, ideologies, or cultural productions. Examples might include topics in American social movements, literature, media, tourism, folklore, and intellectual history. Fields studying specific American ethnic or racial groups are considered to be both independent of and included within the broader American studies discipline. This includes European American studies, African American studies, Latino studies, Asian American studies, American ...
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Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, etc. It is about creating something by thinking across boundaries. It is related to an ''interdiscipline'' or an ''interdisciplinary field,'' which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge. Large engineering teams are usually interdisciplinary, as a power station or mobile phone or other project requires the melding of several specialties. However, the term "interdisciplinary" is sometimes confined to academic settings. The term ''interdisciplinary'' is applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study. Interd ...
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Henry Nash Smith
Henry Nash Smith (September 29, 1906 – June 6, 1986) was a scholar of American culture and literature. He was co-founder of the academic discipline "American studies". He was also a noted Mark Twain scholar, and the curator of the Mark Twain Papers. The ''Handbook of Texas'' reported that an uncle encouraged Smith to read at an early age, and that the boy developed an interest in the works of Rudyard Kipling, Robert L. Stevenson and Mark Twain.Gossett, Thomas F. "Smith, Henry Nash (1906-1986)."
''Handbook of Texas''. December 1, 1995.


Life

Smith was born in Dallas, Texas to a father, an accountant who was a native of Kentucky, and a mother who was a native of Alabama. In 1922, he enrolled in

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Royal Library Of Belgium
The Royal Library of Belgium (french: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, nl, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, abbreviated ''KBR'' and sometimes nicknamed in French or in Dutch) is the national library of Belgium. The library has a history that goes back to the age of the Dukes of Burgundy. In the second half of the 20th century, a new building was constructed on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg in central Brussels, near the Central Station. The library owns several collections of historical importance, like Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, and is the depository for all books ever published in Belgium or abroad by Belgian authors. There are four million bound volumes in the Royal Library, including a rare book collection numbering 45,000 works. The library has more than 750,000 prints, drawings and photographs, 150,000 maps and plans, and more than 250,000 objects, from coins to scales to monetary weights. This coin collection holds one of the most valuable coins in the field of ...
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British Association For American Studies
The British Association for American Studies is a learned society in the field of American studies. It was founded in 1955. It produces the ''Journal of American Studies'', ''American Studies in Britain'', ''US Studies Online'', BAAS Paperbacks, and ''Resources for American Studies''. It has produced many of its own publications, as well as many in partnership with Cambridge University Press, Edinburgh University Press, and Microform Academic Publishers. BAAS Chairs past and present *Frank Thistlethwaite 1955–59 *Herbert Nicholas 1959–62 *Marcus Cunliffe 1962–65 *Esmond Wright 1965–68 *Maldwyn Jones 1968–71 *George Shepperson 1971–74 *Harry Allen 1974–77 *Peter Parish 1977–80 *Dennis Welland 1980–83 *Charlotte Erickson 1983–86 *Howard Temperley 1986–89 *Bob Burchell 1989–92 *Richard King 1992–95 *Judie Newman 1995–98 *Philip Davies 1998–2004 *Simon Newman 2004–2007 *Heidi Macpherson 2007–2010 *Martin Halliwell 2010–2013 *Susan Currell 2013–201 ...
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Cultural Diplomacy
Cultural diplomacy is a type of public diplomacy and soft power that includes the "exchange of ideas, information, art, language and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding". The purpose of cultural diplomacy is for the people of a foreign nation to develop an understanding of the nation's ideals and institutions in an effort to build broad support for economic and political goals. In essence "cultural diplomacy reveals the soul of a nation", which in turn creates influence.United States, Department of State, Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy, Diplomacy Report of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy, 3. Though often overlooked, cultural diplomacy can and does play an important role in achieving national security efforts. Definition Culture is a set of values and practices that create meaning for society. This includes both high culture (literature, art, and education, which appeals to elites) and popula ...
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Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of other First W ...
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Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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Cultural Studies
Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields. Cultural studies was initially developed by B ...
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American Exceptionalism
American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is inherently different from other nations. ''American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword.''
Seymour Martin Lipset. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. 1996. p. 18.
Proponents of it argue that the , political system, and historical development of the U.S. are unique in

Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Zelick Trachtenberg (March 22, 1932 – August 18, 2020) was an American historian and the Neil Gray Jr. Professor of English and professor emeritus of American Studies at Yale University. Born in Philadelphia, Trachtenberg attended Temple University, and earned his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, writing his dissertation on the Brooklyn Bridge in American literature. Trachtenberg taught at Penn State for eight years, then spent a year at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, before joining the faculty at Yale in 1969. He resided in Hamden, Connecticut with his wife Betty (née Glassman), pianist and college administrator, was Dean of Students at Yale University from 1987 to 2007. Trachtenberg's landmark 1990 book, ''Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his ...
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Annette Kolodny
Annette Kolodny (August 21, 1941 – September 11, 2019) was an American feminist literary critic and activist, held the position of College of Humanities Professor Emerita of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her major scholarly writings examined the experiences of women on the American frontiers and the projection of female imagery onto the American landscape. Her other writings examined some aspects of feminism after the 1960s; the revision of dominant themes in American studies; and the problems faced by women and minorities in the American academy. Biography Kolodny was born in New York City. Capping what was already a long and distinguished career, in 2012 Annette Kolodny published ''In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery'' (Duke University Press). The influential magazine ''Indian Country Today'' immediately named it as one of the 12 most important ...
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The Machine In The Garden
''The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America'' is a 1964 work of literary criticism written by Leo Marx and published by Oxford University Press. The title of the book refers to a trope in American literature representing the interruption of pastoral scenery by technology due to the industrialization of America during the 19th and 20th century. For example, the trope notably appears in Henry David Thoreau's ''Walden'' (1854) when the whistling sound of a steam locomotive disrupts the natural landscape of Walden Pond. Marx uses this literary metaphor to illustrate the relationship between culture and technology in the United States as depicted in the work of American authors such as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Henry Adams, Henry James, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Synopsis Marx identifies a major theme in literature of the nineteenth century—the dialectical tension between ...
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