BASIC QUESTIONS AND EARLY PATHS: AMERICAN STUDIES AS CULTURAL STUDIES
BASIC QUESTIONS AND EARLY PATHS: AMERICAN STUDIES AS CULTURAL STUDIES

Summary/Abstract: The current paper aims at contributing to the clarification of a number of positions in contemporary debates today, by focusing on the early stages of what would be called, on both sides of the Atlantic, American Studies and Cultural Studies. The text links significant issues, figures and orientations in areas of inquiry that have moved, along with the changing scholarly and social climate, from a reverential attitude toward canonical culture and the elite cultural heritage, reminiscent of Matthew Arnold’s Victorian definitions of culture, toward a more critical and confrontational attitude to culture in the age of diversity, as illustrated in competing versions of Cultural Studies and American Studies.

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