Terms and Concepts (Cultural History-2025/26)

Comprehensive practice flashcards covering all key cultural history terms, movements, and concepts from the Anthropocene to Post/Neo-colonialism.

What is the Anthropocene?

A suggested geological period succeeding the Holocene that marks the influence of human beings (Anthropos) on geology through climate change, pollution, and a decrease in biodiversity, defined in the 1980s and 2000s.

How is culture defined analytically in cultural history?

All material and symbolic practices of a society that serve as systems of orientation or interpretation, organized in discourses.

What is American Exceptionalism?

The idea that America is not only different from other states but different from all states because it possesses a specific, perhaps divine mission in world history, making it unique, exceptional, and 'the greatest country in the world.'

What does the field of American Studies encompass?

A mixture of historical and literary scholarship, including urban studies and media studies, with a special focus on structures of social differentiation such as race, class, gender, ability, and age.

What are the characteristics of the Trickster figure in indigenous American cultures?

A mythological transformer and boundary crosser who is both good and bad, male and female, often called 'Coyote', who stole fire from the gods, acted as a friend and teacher to humans, and relates to figures like Brer Rabbit, Till Eugenspiegel, and Reineke Fuchs.

How does Stuart Hall define conquest?

An act of taking possession that goes along with the idealization or vilification of the indigenous population through projection, the imposition of European categories, and the failure to respect difference.

What did indigenous people refer to as 'invisible bullets'?

Diseases brought to America by Europeans, such as smallpox, which led indigenous people to believe white people were killing them with invisible weapons.

What did John Winthrop mean by the phrase 'City upon a Hill'?

A biblical phrase he used to instruct his Puritan brethren to be a shining example of Christianity and perfection for the whole world, often considered the origin of American Exceptionalism.

How did the Puritans view Predestination and Providence?

They viewed Providence as the book of history in which all events, past or future, are pre-determined by divine will, meaning all human actions, fates, and ideas are foretold and predestined.

What were the consequences of King Philip's War (Metacomet's War)?

The intercultural colonial war broke the power of the Wampanoag Nation under sachem Metacom, resulted in prisoners being sold into slavery, and killed $40\%$ of the indigenous population in New England.

What defined the American Enlightenment, and what documents did it produce?

Also called the Age of Reason, it led up to the American Revolution through writings by figures such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin, culminating in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with the Bill of Rights.

What constitutes the system of Checks and Balances in the US government?

The separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches through specific institutions: the presidency, Congress, and the courts.

What was the Federal Style in Architecture, and what did it symbolize?

A Palladian style imitating Greek and Roman architecture imported by Thomas Jefferson as a symbol for the new republic, suggesting learning, democracy, and civilization, as well as empire, whiteness, and elitism.

Which reform movements emerged during the Ante-Bellum era?

Abolitionism, temperance, the Sunday School movement, penitentiary reform, and dietary reform.

What was the focus of the Nativism movement in the 1840s and 1850s?

An anti-immigration movement driven by the Know Nothing Movement and American Party that was anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, and anti-German, aiming to reserve America exclusively for those born in America.

What were the four cardinal virtues of the Cult of True Womanhood (Cult of Domesticity)?

Domesticity, purity, piety, and submissiveness.

What characteristics did Alexis de Tocqueville attribute to Americans in 'Democracy in America'?

Individualism, restlessness, materialism, and the tyranny of the majority.

What was Manifest Destiny in the 1830s?

The idea that it was the divine mission of the United States to overspread the entire American continent due to its 'superior' democratic institutions, marking a form of exceptionalism and early American imperialism.

What was the US Indian Removal policy of the 1830s?

A policy of ethnic cleansing that evicted indigenous nations (including the Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Creek) west of the Mississippi, resulting in thousands of deaths on the Trail of Tears ($1830/31$).

How did Ralph Waldo Emerson define Self-reliance?

The concept that individuals and America as a whole must abandon the imitation of European ideas and rely on their own true self, forming part of transcendentalist and romantic self-improvement.

What were the contributions of Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir to Conservation?

Theodore Roosevelt saved Yellowstone and created the US Forest Service during his presidency ($1901-09$), while ecologist and philosopher John Muir helped establish Yosemite and Sequoia.

What was the Middle Passage?

The traumatic transportation of millions of people from Africa to the Americas on slave ships, during which many died, serving as a lasting symbol of their deportation.

What was the Fugitive Slave Law, and what was its impact?

A component of the Compromise of 1850 requiring the North to return fugitive slaves from the South, which deepened regional tensions and helped inspire Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'

What was a Minstrel Show?

A popular entertainment format emerging in the 1830s featuring skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performed by white people in blackface to mock Black people and reinforce racial stereotypes.

What doctrine was established by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)?

It upheld Southern Jim Crow segregation under the formula 'separate but equal', remaining valid until 1954.

What change did the Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 enact regarding indigenous sovereignty?

No Indian tribes were recognized as independent nations anymore; instead, indigenous people were treated as individuals and 'wards' of the federal government.

What was Frederick Jackson Turner's argument in the Turner Thesis (1893)?

He argued that the American character and democratic sentiment were formed along the frontier between civilization and wilderness, creating the myth of the West and the rugged individualist.

How did Realism differ from Romanticism and Sentimentalism in the arts?

Originating in France in the 1850s, Realism rejected the demand for morality in the arts and turned to mundane topics like business, science, technology, the social question, and modern life.

What did Mark Twain mean by the term 'Gilded Age'?

The post-bellum era of big business in America characterized by materialism, corruption, exploitation, and a pro-business ideology.

What narrative formula did Horatio Alger invent in his books?

The 'rags-to-riches' formula, which promoted the myth of the self-made man by showing hard-working, energetic, and morally upright boys rising in society to become 'somebody.'

What philosophical concepts characterized Naturalism in literature starting in the 1890s?

Determinism and social Darwinism, incorporating concepts such as survival of the fittest, natural selection, the struggle for survival, and determination by strong forces like instincts and the environment.

How did William James describe cognition in his concept of the 'Stream of Thought'?

As a continuous 'stream of thought, of consciousness, of subjective life' where the only known reality obeys the laws of 'absolute insulation' within the individual and an 'irreducible pluralism' of sense impressions.

What was Modernism responding to, and what are examples of its movements?

It responded to social breakdown, alienation, acceleration, and automation by opposing Victorianism, Realism, and traditional order, giving rise to movements like Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.

What was the significance of the 1913 Armory Show in New York?

It was an art exhibition that first introduced modernist art to America, presenting artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi, and Gaugin.

What defined Film Noir during the late 1930s and 1940s?

Modernist American cinema utilizing low-key lighting that responded to urbanization, the rise of suburbia, shifts in values and gender roles, alienation, and doubts about the future.

What characterized the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement?

A multifaceted African American movement in Harlem, New York, producing literature, painting, photography, film, and music expressing pride and self-assertion, while haunted by the trope of 'primitivism.'

According to Ostendorf, what core beliefs characterize Popular Culture?

A belief in the common man, egalitarianism, liberalism, the moral community, and pragmatic problem solving.

What reforms did the post-Civil War Populism movement demand?

Support for the agrarian common man via cheaper money (free silver), nationalization of railroads, a graduated income tax, and the direct election of senators.

What were the main goals of the Progressivism movement at the end of the 19th Century?

A response to industrialization and Gilded Age problems that demanded government action against corruption and misery (such as through muckraking journalism) and increased efficiency across society.

What was WPA Photography during the New Deal?

Documentary photography sponsored by the Roosevelt Administration's Works Progress Administration, featuring works such as Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother' and photographs by Walter Evans.

What was Social Realism in modernist literature?

A return to realist techniques to address questions of poverty, history, and middle-class life, as seen in the works of Steinbeck, Lewis, and Faulkner.

What tactics did the Civil Rights Movement employ under Martin Luther King?

Non-violent direct action and civil disobedience through demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins, and legal interventions.

What defined the Counterculture movement in the 1960s?

A youth movement opposing militarism (Vietnam), technocracy, bureaucracy, and conformism, influenced by the civil rights movement, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and Buddhism.

What were the core activities and foundation of the Black Panther Party?

Founded in Oakland, CA, and inspired by Malcolm X and Marxism, the party conducted armed patrols and ran community social programs (like breakfasts and libraries) before being destroyed by the FBI.

What elements characterize Postmodernism in the arts?

Eclecticism, historical nostalgia, play, paradox, and dissonance, focusing on identity, history, consumer culture, disorientation, and the disbelief in grand narratives.

What are Grand Narratives (meta narratives)?

Comprehensive and normative belief systems that claim to explain the course of history and future necessities, such as Liberalism, Marxism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

What does the theory of Gender Performance propose?

That gendered behavior does not naturally derive from biological sex, but is a publicly supported or suppressed performance that produces normalizing consequences.

How is Orientalism defined in cultural representations?

The Western imitation or depiction of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian cultures that essentializes the East as an exotic, wild, barbaric, and underdeveloped 'other' from a patronizing viewpoint.

What does the concept of Hybridity suggest about cultural identities?

That as a result of colonialisms, neo-colonialisms, and globalization, cultural identities are formed through blends, mixtures, appropriations, and imitations rather than essential or natural qualities.

What topics does Post/Neo-colonialism explore?

The consequences of colonizations, de-colonizations, and neo-colonizations on identities (hybridity, nostalgia), observations (orientalism, colonial gaze), migrations (Diasporas, borderlands), and power (subalternity, hegemony, othering).