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American Culture
The development of the culture of the United States of America music, cinema, dance, architecture, literature, poetry, cuisine and the visual arts has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration: European sophistication and domestic originality. At the beginning of her third century, nearly every major American city offers classical and popular music; historical, scientific and art research centers and museums; dance performances, musicals and plays; outdoor art projects and internationally significant architecture. This development is a result of both contributions by private philanthropists and
1. Literature
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe with writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice. In the century's second half Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, would be recognized as America's other essential poet.
Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway is the 1954 Nobel laureate. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsbymay be dubbed the "Great American Novel.
1.1 Poetry
Arose first during its beginnings as the Constitutionally-unified thirteen colonies Most relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the Englishlanguage avant-garde.
This position was sustained into the 20th century to the extent that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential Englishlanguage poets in the period during World War I. By the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. Toward the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified. Poetry, and creative writing in general, also tended to become more professionalized with the growth of creative writing programs in the English studies departments of campuses across the country.
2. Television
There are three basic types of television in the United States: broadcast, or "over-the-air" television, which is freely available to anyone with a TV in the broadcast area, cable television, and satellite television, both of which require a subscription to receive.
The three major commercial television networks in the U.S. are NBC and CBS and ABC. In big cities, affiliates of these networks almost always broadcast in the VHF band, which, in the days before cable became widespread, was premium real estate.
Major-network affiliates run very similar schedules. Saturday mornings usually feature network programming aimed at children (including animated cartoons), while Sunday mornings include public-affairs programs that help fulfill stations' legal obligations to provide public-service programming. Sports and infomercials can be found on weekend afternoons, followed again by the same type of prime-time shows aired during the week.
air the same programming nationwide. Top cable networks include USA Network, ESPN and Versus (sports), MTV (music), Fox News (news), Sci Fi (science fiction), Disney Channel (family), Nick and Cartoon Network (Children's), Discovery Channel and Animal Planet (documentaries), TBS (comedy), TNT (drama) and Lifetime (women's). Cable-TV subscribers receive these channels through local cable system operators. By law, cable systems must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings to customers.
2.3 Cable and Satellite Television cable networks Unlike broadcast networks, most
Today Direct broadcast satellite television services offers programming similar to cable TV. Dish Network and News Corporation's DirecTV are the major DBS providers in the country.
In 2008, Sky Angel became the first in the U.S. to launch a nationwide multi-channel platform of television programming. Currently, more than 70 channels of Christ-centered and family-friendly television and radio programming are currently available across the contiguous U.S.. Subscribers do not need an outside dish or antenna to receive Sky Angel
3. Dance
Great variety in dance in the United States. Home of the Lindy Hop, Rock and Roll, and modern square dance. A variety of social dance and concert or performance dance forms with a range of traditions of Native American dances.
4. Visual Arts
Visual arts of the United States refers to the history of painting and visual art in the United States.
Paintings of the Great West, particularly the act of conveying the sheer size of the land and the cultures of the native people living on it, were starting to emerge as well. Many painters who are considered American spent some time in Europe and met other European artists in Paris and London, such as Mary Cassatt and
5. Theater
Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition, mostly borrowed from the performance styles prevalent in Europe. Regional or resident theatres in the United States are professional theatre companies outside of New York City that produce their own seasons.
Burlesquea form of farce in which females in male roles mocked the politics and culture of the daybecame a popular form of entertainment by the middle of the 19th century. Criticized for its sexuality and outspokenness, this form of entertainment was hounded off the legitimate stage and found itself relegated to saloons and
While revues consisting of mostly unconnected songs, sketches, comedy routines, and scantily-clad dancing girls dominated for the first 20 years of the 20th century, musical theater would eventually develop beyond this.
The massive social change that went on during the Great Depression also had an effect on theater in the United States. The years between the World Wars were years of extremes. Eugene O'Neill's plays were the high point for serious dramatic plays leading up to the outbreak of war in Europe.
After World War II, American theater came into its own. Several American playwrights, such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, became worldrenowned. In the Sixties, experimentation in the Arts spread into theater as well, with plays such as Hair including nudity and drug culture references. In the late 1990s and 2000s, American theatre began to borrow from cinematic and operatic roots.
6. Cuisine
The cuisine of the United States is a style of food preparation derived from the United States. The cuisine has a history dating back before the colonial period. With European colonization, the style of cookery changed vastly. The style of cookery continued to expand into the 19th and 20th centuries
6.1 Pre-1492
Cookery style varied greatly from group to group. Nutrition was an issue for most hunting and gathering societies.
6.1.3 Seafood
Saltwater fish eaten by the Native Americans were cod, lemon sole, flounder, herring, halibut, sturgeon, smelt, drum on the East Coast, and olachen on the West Coast. Crustacean included shrimp, lobster, crayfish, and giant crabs in the Northwest and blue crabs in the East. Other shellfish include abalone and geoduck on the California coast, while on the East Coast the surf clam, quahog, and the soft-shell clam. Oysters were eaten on both shores, as were mussels and periwinkles.
6.2.3 Vegetables
A number of vegetables grew in the northern colonies, which included turnips, onions, cabbage, carrots, and parsnips, along with a number of beans, pulses and legumes. Pumpkins and gourds were other vegetables that grew well in the northern colonies; often used for fodder for animals in addition to human consumption.