Primary Sources in U.S. Literature, History, and Culture:
Secondary Sources on U.S. Literature, History, and Culture:
Individuals: Individuals in History and Literature--General Performers and Performance Groups Visual Artists
Academia:
Just for Fun
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U.S. Literature, History, and Culture
The Making of America collection at Cornell University contains digitized journals and books relevant to American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.
Making of America, the University of Michigan's digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction
The Texts Collection of the Internet Archive
Primary Texts Collected by Genre, Region, Era, or SubjectThe WWW Virtual Library of Theatre and Drama
A Celebration of Women Writers at U. Penn indexes full-length texts by, biographies of, and articles about hundreds of writers.
The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings
Open Collections Program: Women Working, 1800-1930. This collection focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images including 7,500 pages of manuscripts, 3,500 books and pamphlets, and 1,200 photographs
"Documenting the American South," an electronic collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to primary documents (including many full-length books) in five areas: First-Person Narratives of the American South, Southern Literature, North American Slave Narratives, The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865, and The Church in the Southern Black Community A truly amazing resource!
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive
The Antislavery Literature Project archives texts pertaining to the history and literature of abolition, including videos and podcasts of scholarly lectures on the subject.
Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 contains just over 100 pamphlets and books published between 1772 and 1889.
The New-York Historical Society's Manuscript Collections Relating to Slavery, an online portal to nearly 12,000 pages of source materials documenting the history of slavery in the United States, the Atlantic slave trade, and the abolitionist movement.
Secession Era Editorials Project
The International Children's Digital Library contains the full text and illustrations of several hundred books published before 1930.
Literature for Children. Full texts from the collection of the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida. See also The Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
The Nietz Old Textbook Collection at the University of Pittsburgh includes almost 100 fully digitized textbooks
St. Nicholas, a popular U.S. magazine for children, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
19th Century Girls' Series contains some full-length texts, some excerpts, and much biographical and bibliographical information.
Wright American Fiction 1851-1875. This is a collection of 19th century American Fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography.
Text of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
The Annexation of Hawaii: A Collection of Documents
Dyke: A Quarterly: a full, annotated online archive of all issues 1975-1959, plus collateral ephemera
Heresies, an archive of this feminist journal from 1977-1993
Documents from the history of ACT UP: AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
Visual Primary TextsThe New York Public Library's Digital Gallery
The University of Washington Library's Digital Collections include visual holdings relating to Alaska and the Yukon, architecture, art, literature, and music, ethnic groups, industries and occupations, internationa affairs, Klondike and Nome gold rushes, mountaineering, the Pacific Northwest, performing arts, politics and labor, science and engineering, Seattle, and the University of Washington.
The Moving Image Archive of the Internet Archive: topics include animation and cartoons, arts and music, community video, computers and technology, cultural and academic films, ephemeral films, home movies, movies, news and public affairs, sprituality and religion, sports, videogame videos, vlogs, and youth media
The Theatrical Virtual Library contains great links to visual theatre resources
Bluegobo, the online musical theatre video archive
The Museum of Broadcast Communication archives about 100,000 hours of television and radio programs from the 1920s forward, including over 12,000 commercials and 3,000 photographs--all searchable online
American Ephemera--a good resource of 19th century visual texts
The Magic Lantern Show: a collection of images derived from antique glass projection slides.
The Hartman Center of the Duke University Libraries. Includes an image database of over 9,000 images relating to the early history of advertising in the United States.
The Disability History Museum, including a searchable online library of texts and images
Early American Paintings in the Worcester Art Museum
The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
The Authentic History Center: Primary Sources from American Popular Culture
Secondary Sources on U.S. Literature, History, and CultureExcellent video introduction to the "Bechdel Test," a simple set of questions to determine whether a given text treats women as people or as female people.
The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship. Online exhibit created by the Library of Congress.
Common-Place:A Common Place, and Uncommon Voice
Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events
An excellent list of American Literature Sites
Bibliographies of selected figures in American literature
Lists of bestselling books, 1900-1999
The Women in Photography International Archive, curated by Peter E. Palmquist
The World's Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, and Aftermath
Meet Me at the Fair: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
Resources in Progressive Era History
The Political Graveyard: A Database of Historic Cemeteries. This is a superbly searchable database that enables you to identify politicians by region, date of birth or death, party affiliation, religion, cause of death, and many other factors. Amazing!
History Matters, a resource for high school and college teachers of history. This site links to many primary sources on the Web.
A History of the Stereopticon (also known as the stereoscope or stereoviewer)
Solemates: The Century in Shoes
Theatre and PerformanceThe Hemispheric Institute, a consortium of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists dedicated to exploring the relationship between expressive behavior (broadly construed as performance) and social and political life in the Americas.
A non-exhaustive but useful list of websites about American theatre
The Theater Offensive, Boston's GLBTQ theater
Truth Serum, a Boston-based producer of queer, lesbian, and trans performance events
The Butch Casting Project, Celebrating Butches, Trannies and Gender-Queers in Performance
La Mama Experimental Theatre Club
The Franklin Furnace presents, preserves, interprets, proselytizes, and davocates on behalf of avant-garde art. This site contains a searchable database of archived videos of performance art.
American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment 1870-1920, a website of the Library of Congress
Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923, a website created by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920. An exhibit at the Library of Congress.
The Alberti Flea Circus and Strolling Street Organ
Fourth of July Celebrations Database: everything you ever wanted to know about the Fourth of July. This site contains the texts of Fourth of July orations from 1788 to 1996.
The Hard Corn Players, last of Toby Shows
The Lost Museum, a site devoted to P.T. Barnum's museum
U. Penn's "Shakespeare Resources" features Shakespeare's works in multiple folios, the full texts of seventeenth-century promptbooks, and more.
Shakespeare and the Players is a survey through postcards of the many now unfamiliar English and American actors who played Shakespeare's characters for late Victorian and Edwardian audiences.
The Development of Scenic Spectacle contains fabulous animation demonstrating early theatrical technology
On the Purple Circuit, a site promoting GLQBT theater and performance
The Internet Broadway Database
Children and ChildhoodKay E. Vandergrift's Social History of Children's Literature
Perry Nodleman's "Readings about Children's Literature"
Exhibition on early children's literature
Shaping the Values of Youth: Sunday School Books in 19th Century America
Nineteenth-Century American Children and What They Read
Guide to Women Illustrators of Children's Books
Bibliography on the Sociology of Childhood
Ethnic Images in Toys & Games, an exhibition in the Museum of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Histories and CulturesOutHistory.org, a freely accessible educational website in development
Queer Music Heritage, a truly stunning archive of music by and about GLBTQ people, plus dozens of interviews with the music's makers.
Lesbian Photography on the U.S. West Coast, 1972-1997, an essay and exhibit by Tee Corinne
The International Lesbian and Gay Association
A history of The Furies, a lesbian/feminist collective based in Washington, DC in the 1970s
The Rainbow History Project of Washington, DC
Memorial to gay activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895)
Sites Devoted to Individuals
Individuals in History and Literature--GeneralThe Lewis Carroll Society of North America and all things related to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Theodore Roosevelt Association
Individual Performers and Performance GroupsWoody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950 (at the Library of Congress)
An archive of information about the It's All Right to Be Woman Theatre, 1970-1976
Individual Visual ArtistsOle Ahlberg at the Galerie Gerly
Julian Beever, pavement artist
Tee Corinne's Papers at the University of Oregon
Phranc, the Cardboard Cobbler
Mizuta Tasogare and Kato Jado, pencil carvers extraordinaire
Kurt Wennder, street painter
AcademiaAcademic Organizations and Other Resources
The American Studies Crossroads Project
The American Theatre and Drama Society
American Theatre, Drama, and Performance syllabi
H-Childhood's Syllabus Exchange
Nineteenth Century Studies Association
Society for the Study of American Women Writers
National Women's Studies Association
CUNY Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
Society for the History of Children and Youth
More Links: Scholarly Organizations
For some good laughs, my all-time favorite article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Dial-a-Doctorate, by Thomas Bartlett
And for some more good laughs, my all-time favorite thread on the Chronicle of Higher Education forum: "Why are academics so poorly dressed?"
Links for Grad Students
Miriam Posner's "Some basic things you should know about being in a Ph.D. program"
"The Professor is In," Karen Kelsky's superb advice and wisdom for grad students and anyone on the academic job market. See also Kelsky's excellent column, "Graduate Schools is a Means to a Job."
Scholarly Pursuits: A Guide to Professional Development During the Graduate Years, by Cynthia Verba
Ig Nobel Prize winner John Perry advocates Structured Procrastination, a technique of getting crucial things done by avoiding something that's even more important.
Graduate Student Resources on the Web
How to be a Good Graduate Student
Mary Corbin Sies's home page, which links to some great resources for academic job-seekers
Excellent essay from the London School of Economics and Political Science about how to write effective titles and abstracts for articles and books
Academic Coach Taylor has Some Advice for You
If you are considering applying to grad school...Is Graduate School a Cult? by Thomas H. Benton [William Pannapacker]
100 Reasons NOT to Go to Grad School
"What are You Going to Do with That?" by William Deresiewicz. I don't agree with every word of this essay, but I wish all my undergraduate students would read it.
Nate Kreuter on why so many grad students ignore warnings about the job market
"Open Letter to My Students: No, You Cannot be a Professor," by Larry Cebula
Bibliophile Shop-o-RamaGuide to Book Sales in Massachusetts
Just for FunPhysics Songs. As featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education!
Stuff on My Cat, because stuff + cats = awesome.
Peep Research: a study of small fluffy creatures and library usage
Gothtober, a collection of animated shorts on a Halloween theme. My favorite short features a friendly little quiz on ventriloquism. Enjoy!
What does your phone number spell?
Annotations of all the Sandman comic books
Excerpt from Temple Grandin's book, Thinking in Pictures, about what it's like to be autistic. Fascinating reading!
Engagement photographs by Amanda Rynda
Remove Me from Your Rooster!, or, the joys of being a gay rights activist
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