ROB
CHESTER'S AMERICAN STUDIES 603 WIRED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Metasites
useful for the study
of cultural memory and popular culture
The following websites are
all good resources for the study of cultural memory, history, and
popular culture, both within the U.S. and the Americas (the focus of the
course), and occasionally elsewhere too. I have endeavoured to include
sites that provide one or more of the following
resources: a well-developed and relatively contemporary bibliography
or filmography; links to a number of other web resources which deal with
collective memory; archives (or directions to archives) which provide
access to primary materials through which to examine how the past is
remembered (or, as it is popular to write, re-membered),
interpreted, understood, and reconstructed (or constructed). Some sites
have greater relevance in a particular branch of memory studies, such as
oral history, or film, but I hope that the sites combined constitute a
helpful guide to the study of memory on the web. Following the most
useful sites, I also include here a brief introduction and links to
several other websites which caught my eye as I researched this
site. Some of these are examples of memory enterprises, some with
capitalistic
motivations, others with commemorative or didactic intent, that I consider
capable of informing us about how memory operates and is operated in
postmodern U.S. society. Some other academic sites which might prove
useful
are included also.
Center For the Study of
History and Memory at the University of Indiana
Maintained by John
Bodnar, a historian of memory and memorialisation, this site contains
good introductory bibliographies
of literature on memory, both in the Americas and elsewhere, under the
headings "Oral History," "Power and
Politics," "Place and Memory," and "Popular Culture and Memory." Each of
these sections offers links to other sites dealing with the study of
memory in a particular subfield or region, such as the National Council on
Public History in the U.S., and the East Midlands Oral History Archive in
Leicester,
England. A directory of the CSHM's archived resources, as well as an
online
newsletter directing readers to ongoing memory projects in the United
States is provided. The CSHM began as a project dedicated to the study of
oral history, and its focus remains slanted towards the study of
oral history/memory. It contains a didactic section on interview
techniques and strategies, as well as suggestions for bringing the
study of oral history into the classroom. This is
clearly an important resource, particularly for those
concerned with memory at the micro-level, or with the
study of history and memory in cultures without written
documentation of the past.
American Memory: Historical Collections
for the National Digital Library
Part of the Library of
Congress, this is a massive resource. It's
not really a metasite as such, as its main focus is not other websites but
the 7 million digital items the "American Memory" collections
contain. These are comprised of visual materials: posters, photographs,
art; audio materials: recorded
interviews, music, etc.; and textual materials: letters, documents, and so
on. The range of subjects covered is vast, but a search facility, coupled
with the ability to search via medium or collection, makes navigating the
site a more manageable prospect. Educational material for use with
children is also available. The site does provide connections to
other digital archives under the heading "World Libraries and
Collections." Through this one can access collections devoted to
U.S. relations with countries including Spain, Brazil, and the
Netherlands, and a number of research guides and databases. Such
links might prove useful in developing the transnational, comparative
aspect I wish to introduce to my course on American cultural memory. Aside
from its
usefulness as a guide to primary source materials for the investigation of
research ideas, the
American Memory archive is useful to the student of memory and the nation
if viewed as a primary resource itself. This is a site of
"official" national remembering. Therefore, the materials that the site
chooses to archive, and the manner in which the archived materials are
presented becomes of interest to us with regard to how a national
institution such as the Library of Congress selects and presents material
considered suitable for inclusion in the national repository of
history and memory.
American
Memory Primary Sources
This metasite provides links to
innumerable sites connected with the study of cultural memory in
the United States. Divided
into sections titled "Power," "Identity," "Culture," and
"Environment," the library connects users to websites which contain
primary resource materials from history, such as archives of newspapers
and historical speeches and documents. Selected links are provided under
each subheading, but a search facility
allows for materials on almost any topic to be recovered. To mention just
a few, there are links to websites dealing with memory of Japanese
internment in World War II, African Americans who have featured on
U.S. stamps (a form of commemoration), and women's voting rights. This
site facilitates extensive
online research on issues of gendered, ethnic, and racialized memory, but
is a little lacking in the area of more contemporary
history. Still, you
can't have it all, and this is a highly usable metasite
with expansive potential.
Wikipedia's
Guide to National Monuments and Memorials
While we should never
allow ourselves to be limited to the
study of monuments and memorials, they are nevertheless an
important branch of studies of cultural memory. I struggled
to find a comprehensive metasite for commemorative
architecture in the United States, and there are a number
of important sites missing from Wikipedia's list - the newly
dedicated Indian memorial at the Little Bighorn battlefield
in Montana for one. However, this site is the best I could find in
this area. It provides a long
list of National Parks, Monuments, and Memorials, with links
to information on each, as well as other sites - including official
websites if these are available. Unfortunately, because it is limited
to "National" memorials it omits many American memory projects,
including famous ones as well as those less well known. Furthermore,
many of the sites listed do not have links, and this can be frustrating
for the user. Nonetheless, this is an informative website for those
interested in what French theorist Pierre
Nora calls
"lieux de memoire" - sites of memory. Of course,
specific memorials can be easily located via a google
search.
Film
Resource Guide at St. Louis University
The study of film is an
important aspect of memory studies, and one that I am particularly
interested in. With historically-based movies coming out of Hollywood at a
great rate of knots (as I write, The Alamo is about to be released
- "This is the Alamo to remember," one critic writes) the ways in which
history and fiction blur in cultural memory are of particular
concern. This site, although not updated in some time, provides a large
number of links to resources (both web-based and otherwise) for writing
scholarship on film. A brief but useful bibliography is included, as are
links to film societies and awards ceremonies, such as the Sundance Film
Festival. Links to international film sites are also presented, as are
Websites dealing with film theory, and film history. A glossary of
film terms is very useful too.
Two of this metasite's strongest
links are
worthy of individual mention
here. The Movie Review Query Engine is a
site that allows the user to search for reviews of any film, often with
some success. I don't vouch for the quality of the reviews, but this is
certainly a helpful search engine for research.
Secondly, The Internet Movie Database is worth a few
minutes of anyone's time. This site is probably worth an entry all its
own, and is, I think, highly regarded by those with an interest in
film studies. As well as news from the film world, IMDB allows one to
search its
enormous archive by film title, cast members, characters, plots, even
quotes, although I had some trouble with the quote finder from time to
time. Although prone to the odd pop-up, IMDB is an invaluable resource.
Voice of the
Shuttle
Run by Alan Liu of the english department at UC
Santa Barbara, Voice of the Shuttle is a metasite dealing with scholarship
and the academy as a whole. Links go to articles, other metasites,
scholarly journals,
organisations, glossaries, and encyclopaedias (among other things),
dealing with
theoretical fields, scholarly disciplines, individual scholars, and
particular areas of
interest. Many of these are very relevant to American
studies, and this site, along with the course readings, might enable
students to introduce themselves to and become familiar with some of the
central ideas on which the course hopes to build. A search facility allows
one to navigate through the material more easily. It is
perhaps lacking in a tremendous amount of material which we can directly
categorise as cultural memory, but memory studies draw on much of the
body of theories and ideas offered here. Voice of the Shuttle is a very
helpful
tool with which to look up names and ideas, most of which are presented
in a highly accessible manner. I
discovered one or two dead
links, but most worked.
American Studies
Crossroads Project
Run by Georgetown University, Crossroads is a
large (probably the largest) collection of links relevant to the field of
American studies, and merits inclusion because of this. Among
other things, Crossroads
connects the user to organisations, research aids and resources,
dissertation abstracts, and a library of syllabi. Particularly useful is
the American Studies
Web. This is the largest American studies digital bibliography on the
web, and material is easily accessible by time period, historical event,
or field of interest. Among the wealth of information here, there is much
here related to cultural memory and
identity. This site might allow for students in the course to
pursue their specific area of interest. If one is interested in,
say, issues of memory in African American studies, following the heading
"Race,
Ethnicity, and Identity," leads to links on African American arts
and culture, slave narratives, film studies, and various museums
and archival sites concerned with memory in black America. I believe this
site could be of use to anyone wishing to conduct research in any of the
many disciplines that interest Americanists.
PopCultures.com
There
are a
number of large metasites on popular culture on the internet. This is a
very good one (I include a couple of others below in "Relevant
Extras"). Popcultures.com provides links to essays by and in response to
some of the more famous names in cultural studies, as well as to
bibliographies in numerous areas, scholarly journals, online archives,
etc. Extremely useful to those interested in pop culture and mass
communication/mass media studies, this site is easily navigable and packed
with worthwhile links, almost all of which work. Additionally, the "sister
site" to popcultures.com
is PopMatters.com, an online magazine
dealing with issues in contemporary popular culture. The multifarious
forms of popular culture are crucial sites within which narratives
of cultural
memory are produced and contested, and it is important that students
keep up with popular media such as film, television, music, the web, and
so on.
Again, well worth a look.
Some Relevant Extras
Ten Silliest
Historical
Sites in America
A funny (but also worrying) look at some of the
most blatant distortions of the past by some of America's
"historical" monuments. Among other sites, J Loewen, author of Lies
Across America
and Lies My Teacher Told Me, points out an Idaho monument to an
invented
massacre of white settlers by Indians, erroneous claims to be first in
flight by a Texas town, and also the great number of monuments to
Confederate dead in states, such as Kentucky, where the majority fought
for the Union. While 90,000 Kentuckians fought for the Union and
35,000 for the South, Kentucky has 72 Confederate monuments and only 2
dedicated to the Union. In general, this site gives an indication as to
how American
history, presented as memory in the public sphere, is falsified to support
a triumphalist version of the (white) U.S. past.
America's Pet Monuments
A
headstone for your hamster? A casket for your cat? A mausoleum for your
dead parrot? The memory boom of recent years knows no
bounds, and America's Pet Monuments provides just what one might
expect it
to, offering plaques and other death-related paraphernalia to pet
owners with an urge to consume memorialization. You can even browse
messages left by the bereaved if you're so inclined.
Civil War Reenactors
Part of the
course will deal with memory as embodied performance. Reenacting Civil War
battles is a popular pasttime, as well as a prime example of an instance
in which performance studies might inform scholarship of memory. With
links to other Civil War websites, and access to photographs and sites
concerned with the preservation of land connected to the American
Civil War, this is an interesting glimpse at one distinct way in
which the past is re-membered.
Those with more international tastes
might like to visit The Sealed Knot
to see how the
English go about reenacting their own civil war (1642-1646).
White House Commission on Remembrance
A
bipartisan political affair, this site is a red, white, and blue bedecked
patriotic monument to military sacrifice and national progression through
it. It provides an illuminating look at some of the ways in which
political elites seek to organise memory and reinforce the hegemony of
military triumphalism in doing so. A plan to craft a memorial sculpture
from the sand of the Normandy beaches is detailed, and a list enumerating
the "History of Sacrifice" of American soldiers is provided. The
definition of "American" is an interesting one. The Native
Americans who died in the centuries of warfare that saw Europeans conquer
North America do not count it would seem. Short
historical explanations for U.S. fighting are
offered. Unsurprisingly, Vietnam, to cite one
example, is turned into a defensive war for the benefit of the South
Vietnamese. This is
a prime example of a nationalistic, political memory project, but it does
contain some good information and photography.
Marxists.org
From Marx himself to
Jameson, this metasite provides links to excerpted writings by a
large number of prominent
Marxist scholars. One can access readings, or look up terms in the
Encyclopaedia of Marxism. Given the prevalence of Marxist-influenced ideas
- most notably Gramsci's concept of hegemony - in cultural studies, it
seems a worthwhile inclusion, capable of providing a good grounding in
Marxism from the sources and beyond. The only disappointment for me is the
lack
of links to neo-marxists and the British cultural studies school: no Hall,
no Williams, no Thompson.
Cinemedia: The
Internet's Largest Film & Media Directory
Containing over
25,000 links, cinemedia is a search engine that might prove very
useful. Just type in a subject area or keyword, and see where it
takes you.
Foucault.info
This site provides
links to materials both by and about the influential Michel
Foucault. There are transcripts of interviews and lectures, excerpts from
some of Foucault's writings, and secondary literature about
him. There is a search facility available. Foucault
theorized memory and power, two of the primary concerns of my course, and
therefore this site might prove useful.
Cultural Studies
Central
Another cultural studies metasite providing links to other
sites, as well as essays and criticism. Some of the links are dead, but
most are working.
The Media and
Communications Studies Site
From the University of Aberystwyth in
Wales, this site is anothe good resource for those interested in cultural
and media studies. Search for links by area, such as "Gender and
Ethnicity," or "Pop
Music/Youth," or type a keyword and locate material this way.
Postmodern
Generator at Elsewhere.org
Finally, if you get
sick of the whole thing, go to elsewhere.org and allow their postmodern
generator to cook you up an essay on, for example, "The Pretextual
Paradigm of Discourse and the Textual Pardigm of Context." You never know,
you might get away with it - Alan Sokal did, after all. If it
doesn't work, however, and you are depressed about it,
elsewhere.org also offers a teen poetry generator to conjure some artistic
solace at the click of your mouse: Teen Poetry
Generator