Here are some extremely helpful sites as you begin to research:

• American Quarterly: the flagship journal of the American Studies Association.
  
• American Studies Association: The website of the main organization dedicated to American Studies.
• American Studies Journals: A Directory of Worldwide Resources: Just what it says.
• American Studies Crossroads Project: a navigational site linking to reference and research in the field of American Studies.
• American Memory Project of the Library of Congress: a gateway to primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States.
• Encyclopedia of American Studies: Get full-text access through the Fordham library.
• H-Amstdy discussion list: Provides a forum for research and teaching in the field of American Studies, and for interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary perspectives on culture. The list focuses on the cultures of North America and the United States, and offers an international perspective on the study of American culture. Bulletin board, book reviews, etc.
• History Matters Project: an annotated guide to websites about topics in United States history, listed by time period and topic.
• Keywords for American Cultural Studies: A website linked to the book of the same title, with multiple blogs and wikis on American Studies topics.
• Picturing U.S. History: An interactive resource for teaching with visual evidence, with online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms.

New York Resources and Museums:

• American Folk Art Museum
• ArtCal: A guide to New York City's plethora of art museums.
• Bowery Boys: A weekly blog & podcast about the history of New York City.
• Bronx Museum of the Arts: Museum devoted to a wide variety of artistic styles and issues relevant to Bronx life.
• Forgotten NY: A site devoted to historical landmarks and forgotten spaces in New York.
• Greater New York: A blog about New York's politics, culture and history.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Museum of Chinese in America
• Museum of the City of New York
• Museum of Jewish Heritage
• Museum of Modern Art
• National Museum of the American Indian
• New Netherlands Institute: A scholarly institue concerned with Dutch documents in New York repositories relating to the seventeenth-century colony of New Netherlands.
• New York Historical Society: New York's premier educational and research institute connected with New York's oldest museum and one of the largest independent research libraries.
• New York City Tenement Museum: A reconstructed Lower East Side tenement building originally built in 1863.
• New Yorker: Magazine with an abundance of events and news coverage.
• Patell and Waterman's History of New York: A blog about life in New York City.
• South Street Seaport Museum
• Virtual New York City: A website maintained by CUNY and devoted to the history of New York City and its people.
• Whitney Museum of American Art: The Whitney Museum houses one of the world's foremost collections of twentieth-century American art.

And don't forget to access:

• Fordham University Libraries
• The Library of Congress
• The New York Public Library