What is your field of American History?

You are interested in the formation and change in civic and political institutions, ideals, and participation in American life. While you might be interested in presidents or congressional activity, or diplomatic history and international relations, you are also drawn to the political activism and involvement of may groups of people. You are interested in the conception of and claim to rights, liberties, and the ideals of American citizenship over time. You look to legislation, political activism, media representation, and popular conceptions of civil ideals as sources. You seek to uncover how different groups experienced and interpreted their civic identity and representation over time. Your friends always want you on their trivia team because you know so much about the presidents. You might watch too much PBS.

You are interested in questions of capital, labor, and power. You draw insight from the ideas of economists and historical sociologists to develop arguments about the flow of technology, goods, ideas, and the institutions and policies that shape their dissemination. Your arguments contribute to how historians understand the construction of markets over time and the political, social, and cultural significance of developments in economic matters. Your friends might think you are a socialist because you are always bringing up Marx.

You are interested in questions of individual, group, and national identity and culture. You are drawn to sources that get at the inner life of your subjects, including religious and spiritual life, gender and sexual identities, and community formation. You draw insight from Anthropology, Religious Studies or other cultural studies fields. You look to sources from material culture as well as literature, the arts, advertising, and popular publications. You are not afraid of theory. People don't know why you keep mentioning Emile Durkheim and Michel Foucault, but you have very strong opinions about them.

You want to tell the stories of the people who didn't leave many sources for historians to find. You are often frustrated that history is dominated by presidents, legislation, or splashy events such as wars, economic downturns, or crises. Instead, you want to unearth the forgotten histories and experiences of the people. You long to find written sources documenting the experiences of agricultural workers, immigrants, unskilled laborers, rural mountain folk, and people of all ethnicities and genders who often had little voice in civic affairs. You turn to census data, demographic information, court records, and even material culture and historical archaeology to reconstruct the worlds of the people who don't have statues and monuments to mark their existence. You might have been a little too enamored of Howard Zinn in high school.

Everyone has an intellectual life, and it is your goal to explore it. You are interested in the broad intellectual constructions circulating through American politics and culture. While you are drawn to the work of traditional philosophers and political theorists, you are also interested in the evolution of new fields of inquiry and the construction of reality as conceptualized by various historical actors. Your friends often don't understand what you are trying to say, especially when you try to debate them about Hannah Arendt.

Why can't the land be considered a historical actor? People both shape and are shaped by their physical environment. They try to categorize it, order it, and control it -- sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. You are interested in more than just the development of the modern environmental movement -- although you likely have some strong opinions in that regard -- but instead you seek to understand how the physical world has been a key factor in the human experience. Your inquiry intersects with questions of science and geography--as well as justice, capitalism, and economic development. You are particularly drawn to the landscapes of the West, attempts to farm it or harness it for energy, but you might also be interested in the role of fisheries, forests, and fields in shaping America. You'd get more work done if you didn't attend so many rallies.