The relationship between culture and policy has long been a major topic for media and cultural studies. With
this issue, we hope to broaden the meaning of cultural policy, from policies that are explicitly regulating
something we call the “cultural” (including media or traditional rituals or symbols) to include the practice of
policy-making and…[Read more]

This essay explains that cultural studies is, by design, too diverse and heterogeneous a project to be reduced to a single methodology. It goes on to offer a brief definition of project, and to describe four of its major characteristics: (1) its leftist politics, (2) its radical contextualism, (3) its radical interdisciplinarity, and (4) its…[Read more]

Drawing on Stuart Hall’s influential “Notes on deconstructing ‘the
popular’” [Hall, S. (1981). In R. Samuel (Eds.), People’s history and
socialist theory (pp. 227–240). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.],
this essay maps out some of the major shifts in cultural studies’
relationship to popular culture over the past several decades. It
co…[Read more]

This article introduces a special issue on the topic of Cultural Studies and Critical Literacies. The collection of articles is drawn from the central theme of the inaugural Summer Institute of the Association for Cultural Studies: to explore the implications of studying literacy by combining perspectives from cultural studies and (critical)…[Read more]

This provocation contests the familiar construction of classical Athens as an ideal exemplar of democratic politics through a focus on the city’s material fabric, its visual artworks, and the performances which took place within its public spaces. It highlights the city’s ongoing process of material re-building (particularly following the Per…[Read more]

This provocation contests the familiar construction of classical Athens as an ideal exemplar of democratic politics through a focus on the city’s material fabric, its visual artworks, and the performances which took place within its public spaces. It highlights the city’s ongoing process of material re-building (particularly following the Per…[Read more]

This chapter emerges from the energies and aspirations of the years leading up to the Scottish Independence Referendum of September 2014, and explores three dramas created during this period: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (David Greig, 2011), The Bloody Great Border Ballad Project (Northern Stage, 2013) and Rantin (Kieran Hurley, 2013). It…[Read more]