The Group existed for just over ten years before being terminated in 2006. Our objectives -- and the extent to which we achieved them --is partly measured in the Review of the American Studies Master's Degree Program completed in the Fall of 1999. But it is most importantly evidenced by the projects produced by students in the process of learning and which are archived here as a resource for all who interested in the study of American Culture.

The Yellow Pages Directory

A selective, annotated directory of resources for American Studies. Most of this material is still unique and useful: selective, current and annotated set of resources in Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, Literature, Philosophy and Religion, Popular Culture,The Social Sciences,and Science and Technology.

Each directory was maintained by and editor or editors whose task it was to provide the general public with the most current and useful links in their particular area. Now somewhat dated, but still useful.

Hypertexts

An archive of American Studies hypertext projects, all produced here at The University of Virginia. Texts include works by Crevecoeur, Twain, Poe, Henry Adams, Melville, Joel Chandler Harris, Alexis de Tocqueville, Stephen Crane, Cooper, Poe, Jefferson, Charles Brockden Brown, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Thorstein Veblen, D.H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, Max Weber, Booker T. Washington, and Francis Parkman.Hypertextsalso includes three more complex editing projects in which each text serves as the nucleus for a galaxy of other resources that illuminate them: Henry Nash Smith'sVirgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, Alan Trachtenberg's The Incorporation of America. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Cultural Maps

This was and remains an embronic attempt to explore the history and signficance of graphical representations of America. It includes little more than a set of maps relating to U.S. territorial expansion and an exhibit portraying the development of the cartographic representation of America through the Jeffersonian Era. These were intended to be the beginnings of an electronic American Historical Atlas, something we hope someone else will carry forward.

The Capitol Project

The first large collaborative we undertook, we thought of it as an infinitely extensible exploration of the National Capitol as the central icon of our civic religion. This site now has a rich variety ofprojectson the social construction of The Capitol. Some projects focus on art objects found in the Rotunda, others explore the ideological threads that connect objects throughout the building, while still others examine sites on and beyond the Mall that support or contest the ideology manufactured within The Capitol.

The 1930s

This is probably the most fully developed and useful of all the sub-sites on xroads.virginia.edu. The 1930s in America were a time of unparalleled contradiction and complexity. Bracketed on one end by Black Tuesday of the Great Depression and on the other end by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the years between 1929 and 1941 were characterized by what Terry Cooney calls "Balancing Acts," a dance between big government and various regional movements certainly, but perhaps more importantly between competing definitions of what America actually was -- or ought to be. Despite its cultural richness, the 1930s remain nearly invisible in contemporary discussions of America's artistic, cultural, political, economic, and social development. The 30s site is an attempt to provide a densely textured introduction to the decade and describe its importance to modern American thought and culture.

American Studies @ UVA

Undergraduate and graduate program descriptions as well as course syllabi and sample student and faculty projects including both M.A. theses and undergraduate projects collected in an online journal Cultural Objects.

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Last update:
September 1, 2009

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