[Commlist] What's Happening to Cultural Studies: CFP

*Call for Contributions*
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*What’s Happening to Cultural Studies?*
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*Hosted by the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories (CMNH)*
*University of Brighton*
*14-16th September, 2022*



This conference intends to promote a conversation about cultural 
studies: its current shape, the forces that have shaped it, and its 
possible futures.  It will be a hybrid conference, with in-person and 
remote participation.

Rather than assuming a singular proper form of cultural studies 
operating globally, the conference will try to balance the task of 
recognizing the multiplicities of cultural studies with that of 
understanding the changing and increasingly contradictory place of 
cultural studies in the academic world.  One might think of this as an 
effort to begin a cultural studies analysis of cultural studies itself 
in the present conjuncture.

This does not mean that we want to treat cultural studies as an isolated 
and purely academic object. Rather, we wish to find ways of recognising 
and reckoning with the constitution and role of the university in 
cultural studies work today, in teaching, in employment practices, in 
research and in (scholarly) publishing.

Consequently, we are keen to provide a space for people to step back 
from the specificities of their own research to take a broader look at 
intellectual work in cultural studies, and at what is happening to it. 
We want to generate a conversation about cultural studies per se.  We 
welcome contributions from those who want to present their own work in 
ways which serve to open up the larger questions of the state of 
cultural studies. We want to explore the contextuality of cultural 
studies as a multifarious discipline, its variations and affordances. We 
are interested in critically exploring the conditions of its various 
possibilities, impossibilities, and transformations with an eye to 
figuring out what works, what does not and why.

As a whole, the conference aims at building critical perspectives to 
understand the institutional and political conditions of cultural 
studies today. It will explore the cultural studies project in its 
practical and theoretical heterogeneity. Finally, it will work to 
imagine the possibility of a creative and productive future for the project.

In order to promote conversation and collective thinking, we will not 
follow a traditional conference format. We have instead designed a 
structure governed by three themes, each of which will be addressed on 
one of the conference’s three days. Each of these days will begin with 
an opening panel which identifies fundamental questions and struggles.  
These will be followed by further contributions devoted to the theme 
broached in that panel. To avoid ending up with a de facto separation 
within the larger conversation of the whole, we will avoid parallel panels.

Amongst those who have already agreed to participate are Lawrence 
Grossberg, Shakuntala Banaji, Graham Dawson, and Jeremy Gilbert. We are 
particularly keen to hear also from those at the start of or at an early 
stage in their scholarly work on cultural studies.

The three overarching themes, and the three corresponding days of the 
conference, are as follows:

Day 1: What is cultural studies?
• Is there a shared project of cultural studies – e.g., conjunctural 
analysis – manifested in its many different formations?
• If so, is this project still providing some defining and unifying 
sense of what differentiates cultural studies from other 
intellectual/political projects?
• Is there a differential geography to these discussions, changes and 
challenges?
• What are the challenges of new theoretical resources for cultural studies?
• Where is cultural studies flourishing and what are the conditions of 
possibility?



Day 2.  What are the institutional conditions of the current state of 
cultural studies?
• The changing economies, structures and priorities of the academy in 
the contemporary cultural and political landscape – with a particular 
focus on:
o Disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity
o Employment opportunities (who gets employed/where do they get employed)
o What gets published as cultural studies
o What gets taught as cultural studies.


Day 3: Does cultural studies still matter? What is it good for today?
• What might the future of cultural studies look like? What can be done?
• How are the groups – and respective cultures – that practice cultural 
studies constructed, composed, maintained, challenged, changed, and even 
replaced? Who are their real actors and which powers do they impose and 
consent to?
• Has cultural studies lost its way or is it flourishing by transforming 
itself in response to the specificity of the contemporary conjunctures, 
and the increasing demand for academic specialisation?


If you would like to be involved, please contact 
(culturalstudies /at/ brighton.ac.uk) by May the 31st 2022, with an indication 
of which ‘theme’ you would like to participate in, and an abstract (of 
up to 300 words) for how you will do so. We welcome various forms and 
media of contributions.

When sending your abstract, please express a preference for either 
in-person or remote participation. Please also append a short bio to 
your abstract.

Following the conference, participants will be invited to contribute to 
edited publications exploring arguments about the state of cultural 
studies today and its possible futures.


The conference organizing committee:
Cristina Moreno Almeida (King’s), Maria Manuel Baptista (Aveiro), Tom 
Bunyard (Brighton), Lawrence Grossberg (UNC), Suzanne Leonard (Simmons), 
Toby Lovat (Brighton), Patricia McManus (Brighton), Marco Solaroli 
(Bologna), Anna Zsubori (Loughborough)



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