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.

二十世紀過去的半個多世紀，文化開始在政治及知識生活方麵占據重要位置。突然間，所有人都發現文化産品多得就像福特汽車一樣，民眾擁有文化，文化四處泛濫。文化隨處可見，有文化或有教養不再什麼。全球範圍激進的社會運動創造瞭一種文化政治。

《三個世界時代的文化》反映的是這種文化轉變。作者將1945—1989年，短短半個世紀的世界劃分成瞭三個——資本主義是第一世界，共産主義是第二世界，殖民地是第三世界，文化轉變是這三個世界時代的基本形態。作者通過在全球背景下重塑英國文化研究遺産和美國研究運動的激進主義傳統，探討瞭文化意義上的政治和知識鬥爭，提齣瞭特色“美國意識形態”的崛起，描繪瞭三個世界最終閤並為一個這種全球文化的圖景。