Allan Liu, now Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, offered his very ambitious Voice of the Shuttle on-line in spring of 1994 and it has provided a unique resource since. As he states in an accompanying essay, Its mission has been to provide a structured and briefly annotated guide to online resources that at once respects the established humanities disciplines in their professional organization and points toward the transformation of those disciplines as they interact with the sciences and social sciences and with new digital media. (See such pages as Cultural Studies, Sci-Tech and Culture, Cyberculture, and Technology of Writing.) VoS emphasizes both primary and secondary (or theoretical) resources, and defines its audience as people who have something to learn from a higher-education, professional approach to the humanities (which in practice has included students and instructors from the elementary school, high school, and general population sectors).
As this indicates, although Professor Liu is a literature professor (Romanticism, specifically Wordsworth) and the site is particularly rich in British literature areas, it is also especially strong in areas which do not fit the traditional academic areas and in theory. As he says, the site is unusually interdisciplinary, blurring usual "disciplinary grids." It has been given a number of awards, with good reason, because it does present an amazing array of academic areas and the materials linked are solid and thoughtful, as a rule. The site continues with contributions from research assistants and a large group of academics, as well as new links (unedited) suggested by site users. The author provides an article detailing the history and goals of the site and those who have helped him.
The site is quite easy to navigate, with search engine for the site and clear headings. The American Literature site, for example, is headed and organized by the following topics:
GENERAL RESOURCESIn fact, organization is one of the strongest attributes of the site.
AUTHORS, WORKS, PROJECTS Colonial to 1800 19th Century Modern (on Modern page)
Contemporary (on Contemporary page)
COURSE SYLLABI & TEACHING RESOURCES Colonial to 1800 19th Century Modern Contemporary (on English Courses page)
CRITICISM & CRITICS (GENERAL) (for criticism of specific authors, see appropriate sections)
JOURNALS
LISTSERVS & NEWSGROUPS
CONFERENCES & CALLS FOR PAPERS
The Voice of the Shuttle is primarily intended for academic users (there are no commercial sites), especially those wishing to explore interdisciplinary areas of study in the humanities. Materials come from academics, student projects, and even inspired amateurs.
However, someone wishing to use it for an American Literature survey is likely to be disappointed at times. I found a number of outdated links and rather spotty selections in areas which I know to be quite rich. For example, in looking under American Literature syllabi, only one is listed for Colonial American, and it is on teaching 16th and 17th century colonial Spanish literature of North America. In the 19th century American literature section, web addresses for two of the courses have changed, and most of the others may be found on the Georgetown American Studies site (which should have been given one prominent link). There are only six syllabi listed, yet there are other thoughtful and intellectually challenging syllabi to be found on the Internet. However if one goes to the Web Search engines to find them, one of the current best ones, Google.com from Stanford University, is not listed.
The section on authors and works is well worth browsing, but again there are some caveats. Many of the materials seem somewhat dated and more current resources are not available. With these gaps, it's a bit annoying to find multiple entries which link back to the same source (such as the many entries to Eric Eldred's Nathaniel Hawthorne site) or duplicate sites presenting the same primary works of an author. My field is American Transcendentalism, and I was disappointed that the only two major entries for Thoreau are a long-dated student site (which is primarily images) and the Thoreau Edition site (which has moved), but the Thoreau Institute's extensive pages are not listed and there is no category for Transcendentalism on the site.
On the other hand, if a teacher is looking for ways to extend the usual syllabus to include multi-cultural, interdisciplinary, or theoretical perspectives, the Voice of the Shuttle would be an excellent place to begin exploring. There's really no other site that I know of which offers such a wide range of academic sources for a teacher to use. Indeed, that is the stated primary purpose of the site, and perhaps it is unfair to expect it to be thorough and updated in all areas, although one can always hope! As a teacher, it is a site that I consult and browse, but its limitations soon send me elsewhere, though I am often linking from sites that I found through Shuttle references.