The study of culture in the American academy is not confined to a single field, but is a broad-based set of interests located within and across disciplines. This book investigates the relationship among three major ideas in the American academy�interdisciplinarity, humanities, and culture�and traces the convergence of these ideas from the colonial college to new scholarly developments in the latter half of the twentieth century. Its aim is twofold: to define the changing relationship of these three ideas and, in the course of doing so, to extend present thinking about the concept of �American cultural studies.� The book includes two sets of case studies�the first on the implications of interdisciplinarity for literary studies, art history, and music; the second on the shifting trajectories of American studies, African American studies, and women�s studies�and concludes by asking what impact new scholarly practices have had on humanities education, particularly on the undergraduate curriculum.