Cultural Studies Review

Thinking and writing about the past, challenging what 'history' might be and how it could appear is an ongoing interest of this journal and an ongoing (sometimes contentious) point of connection between cultural studies and history. The shifts in how we research and write the past is no simple story of accepted breakthroughs that have become the new norms, nor is it a story where it is easy to identify what the effects of cultural studies thinking on the discipline of history has been. History has provided its own challenges to its own practices in a very robust way, while the cultural studies has challenged what the past is and how it might be rendered from a wide ranging set of ideas and modes of representation that have less to do with specific disciplinary arguments than responses to particular modes (textual, filmic, sonic), particular sites (nations, Indigenous temporalities, sexuality, literature, gender) and perhaps a greater willingness to accentuate the political in the historical.

Lawrence Grossberg, one of the most influential figures in cultural studies, assesses the mission of cultural studies as a discipline in the past, present and future

In recent years `culture' has become a central concern in a wide range of fields and disciplines. This book introduces the main substantive and theoretical strands of this `turn to culture' through the medium of a particular case study: that of the Sony Walkman. Using the example of the Walkman, the book indicates how and why cultural practices and institutions have come to play such a crucial part in our lives, and introduces some of the central ideas, concepts and methods of analysis involved in conducting cultural studies.

The publication of Cultural Studies 1983 is a touchstone event in the history of Cultural Studies and a testament to Stuart Hall's unparalleled contributions. The eight foundational lectures Hall delivered at the University of Illinois in 1983 introduced North American audiences to a thinker and discipline that would shift the course of critical scholarship. Unavailable until now, these lectures present Hall's original engagements with the theoretical positions that contributed to the formation of Cultural Studies. Throughout this personally guided tour of Cultural Studies' intellectual genealogy, Hall discusses the work of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and E. P. Thompson; the influence of structuralism; the limitations and possibilities of Marxist theory; and the importance of Althusser and Gramsci. Throughout these theoretical reflections, Hall insists that Cultural Studies aims to provide the means for political change.

New Cultural Studies is both an introductory reference work and an original study which explores new directions and territories for cultural studies. A new generation has begun to emerge from the shadow of the Birmingham School. It is a generation whose whole education has been shaped by theory, and who frequently turn to it as a means to think through some of the issues and current problems in contemporary culture and cultural studies. In a period when departments which were once hotbeds of "high theory" are returning to more sociological and social science oriented modes of research, and 9/11 and the war in Iraq especially have helped create a sense of "post-theoretical" political urgency which leaves little time for the "elitist," "Eurocentric," "textual" concerns of "Theory," theoretical approaches to the study of culture have, for many of this generation, never seemed so important or so vital. New Cultural Studies explores theory's past, present, and most especially future role in cultural studies. It does so by providing an authoritative and accessible guide, for students and teachers alike, to: the most innovative members of this "new generation" the thinkers and theories currently influencing new work in cultural studies: Agamben, Badiou, Deleuze, Derrida, Hardt and Negri, Kittler, Laclau, Levinas, and iek the new territories currently being mapped out across the intersections of cultural studies and cultural theory: anti-capitalism, ethics, the posthumanities, post-Marxism, and the transnational

The October 2008 Cultural Studies Review is a special issue focusing on cultures of panic, particularly recent examples of moral panic arising from issues of race, gender and sexuality. The diverse essays deal with 'men of Middle Eastern appearance', the trial of Private Kovko, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the use of Ritalin, concerns around children and sexuality in Australia, and arts funding in the United States during the 'culture wars'. The moral panic has centrally to do with the behaviour of crowds, particularly the virtual crowds created by the mass media. It's a mechanism of expulsion, and thus at the same time of group solidarity. It's also a particularly powerful genre of the tabloid media: in its identification and shaming of deviant social groups it rigidly defines and reinforces moral norms, and is complicit with political strategies of consolidation and othering which create and depend on a sense of horror at refugees who wilfully throw their children overboard or push in to the front of the 'queue', at paedophiles grooming children over the internet, at drug-crazed criminals and bingeing teenagers... The challenge is to move beyond the realisation that moral panics are not rationally constructed to an analysis of the passional bases of the social order, and to an understanding of how our politics might deal with this without itself falling into the contagion of panic. The diverse collection of essays gathered together in this edition takes up that challenge.

The first edition of The Cultural Studies Reader established itself as the leading textbook in the field, providing the ideal introduction for students to this exciting and influential discipline. This expanded second edition offers: * 38 essays including 18 new articles* an editor's preface succinctly introducing each article* comprehensive coverage of every major cultural studies method and theory* an updated account of recent changes in the field* articles on new areas such as science and cyberculture, globalization, postcolonialism, public spheres and cultural policy* a fully revised introduction and an extensive guide to further reading.

An ideal introduction, explaining the history and key concerns of cultural studies