Michael Denning (born 1954) is an American cultural historian and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His work has been influential in shaping the field of American Studies by importing and interpreting the work of British Cultural Studies theorists. Although he received his Ph. D. from Yale University and studied with Fredric Jameson, perhaps the greatest influence on his work is the time he spent at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies working with Stuart Hall.

He is married to the African American historian Hazel Carby.

Over the last half of the twentieth century, culture moved to the foreground of political and intellectual life. Suddenly everyone discovered that culture had been mass produced like Ford’s cars; the masses had culture and culture had a mass. Culture was everywhere, no longer the property of the cultured or the cultivated. Radical social movements around the globe invented a politics of culture.

Culture In the Age of Three Worlds is a reflection on this cultural turn which was a fundamental aspect of the age of three worlds, that short half century between 1945 and 1989 when it was imagined that the world was divided into three—the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the decolonizing third world. Recasting the legacies of British cultural studies and the radical traditions of the American studies movement in a global context, Michael Denning explores the political and intellectual battles over the meanings of culture, addresses the rise of a distinctive ‘American ideology,’ and charts the lineaments of the global cultures that emerged as three worlds gave way to one.

二十世纪过去的半个多世纪，文化开始在政治及知识生活方面占据重要位置。突然间，所有人都发现文化产品多得就像福特汽车一样，民众拥有文化，文化四处泛滥。文化随处可见，有文化或有教养不再什么。全球范围激进的社会运动创造了一种文化政治。

《三个世界时代的文化》反映的是这种文化转变。作者将1945—1989年，短短半个世纪的世界划分成了三个——资本主义是第一世界，共产主义是第二世界，殖民地是第三世界，文化转变是这三个世界时代的基本形态。作者通过在全球背景下重塑英国文化研究遗产和美国研究运动的激进主义传统，探讨了文化意义上的政治和知识斗争，提出了特色“美国意识形态”的崛起，描绘了三个世界最终合并为一个这种全球文化的图景。