The State of Cultural History: A Conference in Honor of Lawrence W. Levine

On September 16 and 17, 2005, more than two hundred people gathered at George Mason University's Arlington, Virginia, campus for two purposes-to pay tribute to the extraordinary career of Lawrence W. Levine and to assess the present and future of American cultural history. The two purposes were, of course, intertwined; the organizers of the conference (James W. Cook of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Glickman of University of South Carolina as well as Mike O'Malley and Roy Rosenzweig of George Mason University) decided that there could be no greater tribute to Larry's central role in creating cultural history as a field of study and a mode of analysis than to provide an opportunity for leading cultural historians to come together to present original and provocative work and to consider current problems and prospects in the field.1 We designed the first afternoon of the conference to focus primarily on Larry and his contributions and the next day to concentrate on reflections on cultural history. The essays that follow this introduction represent the first afternoon of the program, whereas the Saturday proceedings will be published in a book edited by Cook, Glickman, and O'Malley.2 As is often the case, the written proceedings capture the intellectual substance more completely than the underlying feeling of the public event. That was particularly true of this event. The conference had been planned in the spring of 2004 and scheduled for September 2005. In keeping with Larry's emphasis on American popular culture, we had posters printed by Hatch Show Print in Nashville, Tennessee, famous for its wood-block posters for country and blues performers. In June 2005 Larry learned that he was suffering from colon cancer. Typically, he insisted that he would still attend the conference and would work his chemotherapy around it. But in early August, his doctors ordered him not to travel from his home in Berkeley. We considered postponing the conference, but at the strong urging of Larry and his wife and sometime collaborator, Cornelia Levine, we decided to go ahead. We set up an Internet video connection that allowed Larry to watch the conference from his home. The afternoon proceedings began with a welcome from George Mason University's provost (and a well-known historian) Peter Stearns. Although Larry spent the largest