History is public or nothing (American studies)

My historical thinking and work in American culture are deeply intertwined. This piece explores how the desire for social commitment has moved my scho larly agenda, as it participated in the successful efforts of a generation of American scholars to alter the meaning of culture studies to reflect sub jective and vernacular experience. For this generation, and for me, the int ersection of politics with the life of the mind opened up a range of unusua l perspectives. Fraught with illusions though it was, it enabled a broader view of culture, not tied to national frameworks and sensitive to the exper iences of working-class people and of women.