The previous incarnation of this blog hoped to focus on the history of my home city of Boston. In that capacity, I ultimately wrote very little and had trouble maintaining my enthusiasm. After deciding to reconsider the Boston History Blog last year, the page went completely silent while I attended graduate school at University of Massachusetts-Boston, where I am pursuing my MA in History.
In this year of study, I've found that my interest in history lies rather firmly in cultural history. I've written a number of papers, done loads of research, and have discovered plenty of things about American culture that are of great interest to me, and I hope will be to you, as well. With this in mind, I am assembling a new collection of short articles, series' of articles, book reviews, etc. which I will be posting starting July 4 on this page. Posts will come twice a week, and will focus primarily on cultural history of the American home front during the World Wars. I will, from time to time, deviate from that period, but 20th century will be the page's primary focus.
What do I mean by "cultural history?" I've seen a lot of definitions. For my purposes, cultural history will deal with the social, political and cultural life of the American people at home. This means anything from the political motivations of bond drives to ethnic groups' support or opposition to the war at home to community efforts to grow food.
I'm very excited about this work, and hope to be able to share it with you.
I've also created a new twitter handle: @CulturalHistUSA. Please follow us and bookmark this page. I look forward to being part of the online dialogue about how Americans came to be Americans through collective cultural experience.
Best,
Matt Wilding
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