 |
 |
 |
HISTORY and AMERICAN STUDIES
GENERAL INFORMATION
 - Outline of U.S. History - How the United States has been transformed from its origins as an obscure set of colonies on the Atlantic coast a little more than 200 years ago into what one political analyst terms "the first universal nation" (published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State).
 USA History in Brief - This publication summarizes in a few thousand words the history of how the United States was founded and the forces and events that shaped the dynamic and varied country that it has become today.- "Toward the City on a Hill: A Brief History of the United States," in Portrait of the USA, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State
- Links to Collections of Historical Materials - links compiled by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State
- American Social and Cultural History - Selected Links - Encyclopedia Smithsonian/Smithsonian Institution
- Making of America (University of Michigan and Cornell University) - Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
- The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy - The Avalon Project is dedicated to providing access via the World Wide Web to primary source materials in the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government.
- Rights of the People - Individual Freedom and the Bill of Rights - "Rights of the People" is a history of American law and justice, written by Constitutional historian Melvin Urofsky. By focusing on the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, and the legal interpretations, many of them written by America's finest jurists, that refined and expanded the Bill of Rights, Urofsky presents a history of the United States from the standpoint of individual liberty (published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State).
- A Chronology of U.S. Historical Documents - College of Law/University of Oklahoma
- Great American Speeches - The Public Broadcasting Service
- The Marshall Plan's 60th Anniversary, web page compiled by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State
- Jamestown 2007 - America's 400th Anniversary
- Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commemoration (2003-2006)
- For additional information, please see separate page on Major Documents
VISUAL MATERIAL
- Exhibit Hall: Online Exhibits - U.S. National Archives & Records Administration - access to many documents, letters, photographs
- The Library of Congress
- American Memory - Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
- Words and Deeds in American History - Manuscript Division
This online display includes approximately ninety representative documents spanning from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century - the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, military officers and diplomats, reformers and political activists, artists and writers, scientists and inventors, and other prominent Americans.
- Today in History
- American Treasures -
The American Treasures of the Library of Congress exhibition is an unprecedented permanent exhibition of the rarest, most interesting or significant items relating to America's past, drawn from every corner of the world's largest library.
- Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention 1774-1789 - Rare Book and Special Collections Division
- A Century of Lawmaking For a New Nation - U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875
- Exhibitions Online
- Archiving Early America - Archiving Early America offers an array of primary source material from 18th Century America: scenes and portraits from original newspapers, maps and writings.
- Map Collections: 1500 - 2004 - Geography and Map Division/Library of Congress
- Historical Maps of the United States - Perry-Castaņeda Library Map Collection/University of Texas at Austin
PRESIDENTS, SECRETARIES OF STATE AND CONGRESSMEN
- The Presidents of the United States (The White House) - The President biographies presented here are from the book The Presidents of the United States of America written by Frank Freidel and Hugh S. Sidey (contributing author), published by the White House Historical Association with the cooperation of the National Geographic Society.
- Presidential Libraries (U.S. National Archives & Records Administration) - The Presidential Library system is made up of ten Presidential Libraries, plus Nixon Presidential Materials Staff and the William J. Clinton Presidential Materials Project. These are not traditional libraries, but rather repositories for preserving and making available the papers, records, and other historical materials of U.S. Presidents since Herbert Hoover.
- Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789 - Present - Prints and Photographs Division/Library of Congress
- The American Presidency: Biographies - Grolier
- POTUS - Presidents of the United States (Internet Public Library) - In this resource one will find background information, election results, cabinet members, notable events, and some points of interest on each of the presidents. Links to biographies, historical documents, audio and video files, and other presidential sites are also included to enrich this site.
- Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States - Bartleby.com
- Presidential Speeches Archive - The Program in Presidential Rhetoric/Department of Communication at Texas A&M University
- Secretaries of State, 1791-2003 - Office of the Historian/U.S. Department of State
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774 - Present - The Directory provides biographical, archival, and bibliographical information on current and former senators, as well as representatives, vice presidents, and members of the Continental Congress.
STATISTICAL INFORMATION
AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY
- Gateway to African American History - web page compiled by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State. The Gateway includes documents, articles, Internet sites and other resources, which honor and acknowledge the accomplishments of African-Americans.
- The Amistad Revolt: A Historical Legacy of Sierra Leone and the United States, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State. A brief factual history of how 53 slaves - captured by the Spanish, principally from the African colony of Sierra Leone - revolted aboard the transport ship Amistad, were interned in the United States, and eventually won their freedom through the U.S. judicial system.
- The Civil Rights Movement and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State. A history of the contemporary civil rights movement in the United States, including a chronology of key events, brief biographical information on two centuries of African-American leaders, and excerpts from King's speeches and writings.
- The Library of Congress
- Africans in America -
The Web site from the Public Broadcasting Service chronicles the history of racial slavery in the United States - from the start of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century to the end of the American Civil War in 1865.
NATIVE AMERICANS
USEFUL LINKS
- American Family Immigration History Center (The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation) - This website makes the millions of immigrant arrival records in the Ellis Island Archives available to everyone.
- Foreign Relations of the United States (Office of the Historian/U.S. Department of State) - The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian, began in 1861 and now comprises more than 350 individual volumes.
- Foreign Relations of the U.S. - This digital facsimile of Foreign Relations of the United States (an incomplete run from 1863-1958) is a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago Libraries.
- The National Security Archive (The George Washington University) - The National Security Archive is a non-governmental, non-profit research institute on international affairs, a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
HISTORY OF THE STATES
Many of the official state websites include links to historical information, e.g.:
AMERICAN STUDIES
ASSOCIATIONS/UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS
ELECTRONIC JOURNALS
(published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State)
AMERICAN LITERATURE
- Outline of American Literature - Follows the path taken by American literature as it has moved from the pre-colonial days of orally transmitted tales of Native American cultures, through the periods of realism,
romanticism, and experimentation, to the prose and poetry of the past 50 years (published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State).
- USA Literature in Brief - USA Literature in Brief pinpoints and describes the contributions to American literature of some of the best-recognized American poets, novelists, philosophers and dramatists from pre-Colonial days through the present. Major literary figures are discussed in detail, as are their major works. Brief discussions of cultural periods and movements such as romanticism, transcendentalism, and modernism put individuals in context and lend perspective. This condensed version of Outline of American Literature highlights major achievers and important works in the canon (published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State).
 - Writers on America -
Presents 15 essays by a diverse group of contemporary American writers, poets, essayists, and intellectuals, on how being an American has affected their decision to write and what they have written during successful careers (published by the Bureau of International Information Programs/U.S. Department of State).
- The Cambridge History of English and American Literature - An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes - one of the most important works of literary history and criticism; it contains over 303 chapters and 11,000 pages, with essay topics ranging from poetry, fiction, drama and essays to history, theology and political writing.
- American Verse Project - a collaborative project between the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative and the University of Michigan Press. The project is assembling an electronic archive of volumes of American poetry prior to 1920.
- Hyperizons, Hypertext Fiction
- English Language Resources - Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library
- Electronic Archives for Teaching the American Literatures - contain essays, syllabi, bibliographies, and other resources for teaching the multiple literatures of the United States
Privacy Notice and Disclaimer
e-mail: embassy@usembassy.at
|
|
|
