Event overview
Conference organized by the MA Cultural Studies programme
“Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God’s name is the point of cultural studies? … At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don’t feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook.”
– Stuart Hall
We may allow Stuart Hall’s recent death to mark an opportunity for reflection on the history of the field of cultural studies, its inherited imperatives and future trajectories. Hall called for a direct engagement between the academy and the social world ‘outside’ of it, imagining cultural studies as the site of this interaction – and hence a site of both contestation and radical politics. Compared to fields such as sociology, this imperative was reflected in a methodological freedom that has been the basis of cultural studies’ flourishing and the crisis of identity which seems to continually confront it. Is this freedom a threat to cultural studies’ raison d’être and character, once located in the sense of political urgency inherited from Hall, or does it now encompass a more abstract reading of the political as rhetorical and aesthetic production? Is this move away from its Marxist roots a denaturing of cultural studies, or a necessary move with the times? And what does the shift in cultural studies tell us about the shift in contemporary politics more generally?
This conference will explore the terrain of cultural studies after and beyond Stuart Hall by interrogating its contemporary orientation, aims, and (anti-) methodologies. From its right to risk and experimentation to its imperative to bring knowledge outside of institutions, we seek to explore the past, present and future iterations of the field in order to reaffirm its contemporary relevance as both an academic field and a political force.
More information, including schedule
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 25 Jun 2014 |
9:00am - 6:30pm RHB 256 and after 4.30pm in Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre |
|
| 26 Jun 2014 |
9:30am - 6:30pm RHB 309 |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
