Cultural Studies - A Routledge Journal

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Cultural Studies - A Routledge Journal

Cultural Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published bi-monthly by Routledge. Editor-in-Chief: Ted Striphas, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

11/10/2025

There are six book review contributions in Volume 39, Issue 5 of Cultural Studies. This post will introduce the first three, and it will be followed by a second post featuring the remaining book reviews.

The first three book reviews are:

1) “Breaking Through the Silence of Structural Heteropatriarchy,” the title of Mattie Hamilton’s review of “Complaint!” by Sara Ahmed

2) Vivien J. Bediako’s review of "Migration, Crisis and Temporality at the Zimbabwe-South Africa Border: Governing Immobilities” by Kudakwashe Vanyoro

3) Skyler Meeks’ review of "Black Iconoclasm: Public Symbols, Racial Progress, and Post/Ferguson America” by Charles Athanasopoulos

The first few sentences of these three featured book reviews can be read in the images above.

All six book reviews can be read in full in the online version of Volume 39, Issue 5 or found between pages 792-809 in the printed edition.

03/21/2025

Cultural Studies will no longer be posting to Facebook—but we would like to share one final post about where else you can find us.

Cultural Studies will continue to post regularly to Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bluesky—and we would like to invite you to follow along on whichever social media platform(s) you prefer.

Find us...

• On Instagram as "Cultural Studies" / at instagram.com/culturalstudiesjournal

• On LinkedIn as "Cultural Studies - Published by Routledge" at linkedin.com/company/cultural-studies

• On Bluesky as "Cultural Studies - Published by Routledge" at bsky.app/profile/culturalstudies.bsky.social

Thank you for following us here during our time on Facebook and allowing us to share this space on your social media feed. We hope you will continue to follow along on any other platforms you visit.

01/15/2025

"Translating Familiar Stranger Into German: The Particularities of the Historical, Cultural and Political Context" by Victor Rego Diaz, Natascha Khakpour, Jan Niggemann, Ingo Pohn-Lauggas and Nora Räthzel is the second article included in Volume 38, Issue 6 of Cultural Studies, a special issue on "Stuart Hall in Translation."

Here is the abstract:
"The translation of Familiar Stranger by Stuart Hall into German was a particular challenge, especially with regard to the concept of race. Hall uses the term ‘race’ to fan out the countless cultural meanings, which are not covered by a homogeneous theoretical conception of race. The result is the ambivalent articulation of race – as well as of colour – which unites racist as well as emancipatory meanings in the same term. This ambivalent chain of meanings has no equivalent in the German language, as the conceptual history of race cannot be detached from the context of German fascism, either theoretically or in everyday language. Another requirement was the translation of gender, not because Hall problematizes this, but because the German language is a deeply rooted genus-typifying language. With some examples of translation, we want to show how we have tried, to consciously act in the space of the displacement of culture, to recognize the specific situatedness of the heterogeneous representations that Hall talks about in Familiar Stranger, and not to unify them in favour of a homogeneous German textuality."

The full text for "Translating Familiar Stranger Into German: The Particularities of the Historical, Cultural and Political Context" can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2403662

We look forward to sharing some information about the final few contributions to Issue 6 before transitioning into posts introducing Volume 39, which you can begin reading here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcus20/39/1?nav=tocList

12/19/2024

"Through a Southern Prism: Translating Stuart Hall Into Spanish," written by Eduardo Restrepo, is the second article featured in the current special issue on "Stuart Hall in Translation."

Here is the full abstract:
"Translation is an intellectual endeavour that requires engagement with authors and conceptual frameworks from different times and worlds. It is not a neutral or simple task of converting linguistic codes but a situated, partial, and interested process that goes beyond mere intellectual activity. In translating Stuart Hall into Spanish for a Latin American audience, specific challenges and interests arise, as detailed in this article. Three main challenges are discussed: preserving the contextuality and complexity of Hall's writings, resisting the temptation to simplify or academicize his work, and ensuring that translations facilitate meaningful cross-cultural exchanges. The article underscores the importance of understanding Hall's work as an intellectual and political project, deeply rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts, and argues for an approach to translation that remains faithful to these dimensions while making his ideas accessible and relevant to contemporary Latin American readers. Finally, the paper reflects on the political significance of translation, highlighting how ideas can transcend boundaries and enrich local debates. Hall's concepts, such as articulation, context, and conjuncture, are presented as valuable tools for understanding and intervening in the social and political realities of Latin America today. The article concludes by emphasizing the ongoing relevance of Hall's intellectual and political contributions and the need for translations that honour his legacy while engaging with the specific challenges and opportunities of our present moment."

The full text for "Through a Southern Prism: Translating Stuart Hall Into Spanish" can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2410753

Cultural Studies will be taking a two-week posting hiatus for the holidays, but we hope you will join us again at the beginning of the new year to learn more about the contributions featured in this special issue on "Stuart Hall in Translation," including two additional research articles and twelve book reviews.

12/18/2024

Introducing this special issue on the theme of "Stuart Hall in Translation," Kuntal Biswas wrote "Introduction – the Unfinished Stuart Hall." This article opens with the following three paragraphs:

"In July 2000, Stuart Hall delivered a keynote lecture entitled ‘Diasporas, or the logics of cultural translation’ (or ‘Diásporas, ou a lógica da tradução cultural’) at a comparative literature conference in Salvador, the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia (Hall 2016). Beginning his lecture with an apology for ‘speaking in a foreign language’ and pledging to talk slowly ‘on pain of death by my translators’, Hall embarks upon a journey around the ‘Black Atlantic’s southern meridian’, interweaving the histories and fates of the Caribbean and Brazilian people – ‘translated societies’ whose experiences resonate with one another from colonisation to globalization (2016).

"Hall took this opportunity – ‘the occasion of my very first ‘landfall’’ in Latin America’s largest country – to reveal to gathered scholars Bahia’s key role in the pre-history of cultural studies (2016). The discipline’s provenance was more commonly located at Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), founded in 1964 under the stewardship of Richard Hoggart. Yet Hall’s ‘Bahian moment’ took place during the previous decade, when between 1954 and 1957 he was diverted from his Oxford University studies by a burgeoning interest in the history of slavery and the making of the New World. First encountering the province through reading the work of Roger Bastide and Gilberto Freyre, he would later write in Familiar Stranger that ‘This diversion in the Rhodes House Library … really marks for me the origins of Cultural Studies’ (Hall 2017, pp. 248–249).

"The significance of the Black New World and Hall’s ‘first, heart-stopping visit to Afro-Brazil’, as noted in Familiar Stranger, are considered in a conversation which took place in August 2022 between the memoir’s co-author Bill Schwarz, Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London, and Liv Sovik, Professor of Communication at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, who attended the Salvador conference (Stuart Hall Foundation 2024). Their discussion – chaired by the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Director Orsod Malik and released in July 2024 to launch the ‘Stuart Hall in Translation’ project – took this appearance as a turning point, not only in the thinker’s intellectual trajectory, but also in the racial and cultural politics of the wider region. [...]"

The full text for this introduction to this special issue on "Stuart Hall in Translation" can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2405585

We look forward to sharing the abstracts of the three articles that followed this introduction over the next two weeks.

12/13/2024

In honor of the release of Volume 38, Issue 6 of Cultural Studies, we would like to take some time to acknowledge the thoughtful scholarship that went into the final issue of Volume 38, a special issue with the theme "Stuart Hall in Translation."

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing information with you about the contributions that comprise Issue 6. This includes incredible cover art by Christina S. Zhu (), as well as the four included articles:
• "Introduction – the Unfinished Stuart Hall" by Kuntal Biswas
• "Through a Southern Prism: Translating Stuart Hall Into Spanish" by Eduardo Restrepo
• "Translating Familiar Stranger Into German: The Particularities of the Historical, Cultural and Political Context" by Victor Rego Diaz, Natascha Khakpour, Jan Niggemann, Ingo Pohn-Lauggas, and Nora Räthzel
• "‘Comrade Unknown to Me’: Colonialism, Modernity, and Conjunctural Translation in Familiar Stranger" by Yutaka Yoshida
We will also be highlighting the twelve book reviews within Issue 6, authored by M. Aubrey Studebaker, James Sutton, Ali Ahsan, Fouad Mami, Aarum F. Youn-Heil, Princess A Sibanda, Beatrys Rodrigues, Sahar Saadat, Atilla Hallsby, Nana Afua Yeboaa Brantuo, Nihal El Aasar, and Dominic Awini Asitanga.

The digital version of the current issue and all of the listed articles above can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcus20/38/6?nav=tocList . Physical editions should arrive in your mailboxes by the end of the month, if they haven't already.

We would like to thank each individual who contributed to this issue for sharing their insights, thoughts, and artistry with us; this issue would not be without you. We also would like to thank you, reading this now—we know the end of the year tends to be a busy time for many, so we appreciate any time you share with us to learn more about this special issue on "Stuart Hall in Translation."

12/03/2024

We are excited to share that Cultural Studies will now be regularly posting on Bluesky!

In today's scattered social media landscape, we want to make it as simple and straightforward as possible to stay up-to-date with Cultural Studies. That's why we consistently share our posts across Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn—as well as coming back to Bluesky. We would like to invite you to follow us wherever else you might be.

Find us...

• On Instagram as "Cultural Studies" / at instagram.com/culturalstudiesjournal

• On LinkedIn as "Cultural Studies - Published by Routledge" at linkedin.com/company/cultural-studies

• And now on Bluesky as "Cultural Studies - Published by Routledge" at https://bsky.app/profile/culturalstudies.bsky.social

Regardless of what platform(s) you follow us on, we strive to keep you informed about both current and past issues of Cultural Studies, to share information about featured articles on salient topics that resonate today, and to update you on other details related to the journal—like this very post.

We hope that, regardless of where you spend your time on social media, you will consider following us there and allowing us to be a part of that space with you.

11/26/2024

In our concluding post related to Volume 38, Issue 5 of Cultural Studies, we would like to share with you once more the cover artwork for this issue: "It Is Stardust 1 (2022)" by Solange Roberdeau ().

Roberdeau's artist statement reads: "In many cultural mythologies, the concept of a “creation space” is expressed as an ambiguous event out of which perception expands and cultures are born, the outcome often unpredictable yet inherently full of hope. I feel deeply the importance of pointing to that space –which is at once ordered and chaotic, controlled and serendipitous – as a positive place of creative potential and possibility."

When expanding upon the premise for this specific series, Roberdeau adds: "It Is Stardust 1-4 is a macro/micro series - as if a magnifying glass were being held up to the universe or down on terrestrial objects, all interstices illuminated. This series seeks to highlight a sense of movement and atmosphere, of becoming and un-becoming at once. Courtesy of Municipal Bonds, San Francisco, CA." We would like to thank the artist for sharing the first of this series with us, to invite us to observe the interplay between movement and atmosphere in this intriguing piece.

If you would like to see more of Solange Roberdeau's art, you can find her on Instagram at or visit her website at www.solange-roberdeau.com.

Thank you to Solange Roberdeau for allow us to use this piece as the cover artwork for Volume 38, Issue 5; we are truly honored.

All print copies of Volume 38, Issue 5, featuring Roberdeau's stunning cover artwork, should have been delivered by now; if you have not received yours, please file a claim at https://help.tandfonline.com/s/contactsupport —including your full name, address, and customer account and/or order number—as well as information about the issue you are missing (Cultural Studies, 2024, Volume 38, Issue 5).

Thank you for allowing us to share Issue 5 with you over these past few weeks; you can find all of the featured articles from this special edition on “The Future of Religious Pasts: Religion and Cultural Heritage-Making in a Secular Age” here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcus20/38/5?nav=tocList

We hope you will continue to follow along as we pivot to Issue 6, our final issue of 2024.

11/20/2024

We would like to congratulate Dr. Joe Edward Hatfield for receiving the 2024 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association (NCA) for his article "Moments of Shame in the Figural History of Trans Su***de," which was published in Volume 37, Issue 6 of Cultural Studies.

The Golden Anniversary Monograph Award is presented to the most outstanding scholarly monograph published during the previous year related to the communication arts and sciences. You can find information about the award and past winners here: https://www.natcom.org/awards/golden-anniversary-monograph-award

Here is the abstract for Hatfield's award-winning article, "Moments of Shame in the Figural History of Trans Su***de":
"This is an article about trans su***de – a longstanding consequence of a necropolitical order that perpetuates the disposability of trans life as a strategy of social subjugation and institutional maintenance. Although having become a more widely publicized crisis in recent years, trans su***de is not a new problem. Evidence of trans su***de dates to the early twentieth century, verifying its status as a malady that victimizes both youth and adults, stretches beyond American borders, and populates a range of discourses since well before the popularization of more contemporary identity categories, such as ‘transsexual’ or ‘transgender.’ In this article, I trace the historical circulation of trans su***de, with a primary focus on its movement across U.S. public culture. I show how trans people have long shaped meanings of trans su***de using a variety of communication channels. I argue that recurrent public renderings of trans su***de accrue force as potent articulations of trans shame, which arise directly from embodied experiences of gender dysphoria and other often hidden intersecting systems of oppression that make trans lives less livable. Thus, the figural history of trans su***de is a multi-generational structure of feeling constituted by an ongoing series of moments of shame that have shifted in tandem with evolutions in media culture and changing norms of trans visibility. These moments of shame open possibilities for challenging transnormative logics of representation and dismantling the necropolitical foundations of anti-trans death worlds."

This award-winning article is currently available to all to read with "full access" status; you can find the full text here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2022.2055096

Likewise, if you would like to learn more about Dr. Hatfield's reception of the Golden Anniversary Monograph Award—including the words that were shared by the panel of scholars that selected Hatfield's article—you can find additional information here: https://news.uark.edu/articles/71423/assistant-professor-joe-edward-hatfield-wins-major-research-awards

We would like to thank Dr. Hatfield for thinking of Cultural Studies for this important scholarship, and we are deeply honored to have this contribution be featured in our last issue of 2023. Thank you for sharing your work with us.

11/18/2024

There are five book reviews included in Volume 38, Issue 5 of Cultural Studies. This post is the second of two dedicated to showcasing these book reviews, concluding with:

4) Zakir Hussain's review titled, "Curriculum and Pedagogical Shifts from a Semi-Peripheral Perspective," reviewing 'Decolonising English Studies from the Semi-Periphery' by Ana Cristina Mendes: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2304870

5) Judith Fathallah's review titled "Fandom through Generational Lenses," reviewing 'Fandom: The Next Generation' edited by Bridget Kies and Megan Connor: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2304871

An excerpt from the beginning of these two book reviews can be found in the corresponding images.

These two book reviews—along with the other three we shared last week—can all be found in Issue 5 of Cultural Studies. Subscribers with online access can read the full issue here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcus20/38/5

You can find these book reviews in the print edition of Issue 5, specifically:
4) Zakir Hussain's review "Curriculum and Pedagogical Shifts from a Semi-Peripheral Perspective" on pages 899-902
5) Judith Fathallah's review "Fandom through Generational Lenses" on pages 902-904

We would like to thank Zakir Hussain, Judith Fathallah, and the three other scholars who wrote book reviews—Jackline F Kemigisa, Hannah L. Westwood, and Amy Whiteside—for their contributions to Volume 38, Issue 5 of Cultural Studies.

We will be spotlighting the cover artwork for Issue 5 next week before transitioning into sharing about Issue 6 in the following weeks. Thank you for following along.

11/14/2024

There are five book reviews included in Volume 38, Issue 5 of Cultural Studies. This post is the first of two dedicated to showcasing these book reviews, beginning with:

1) Jackline F Kemigisa's review titled, "Viral Justice: How We Grow the World
We Want," reviewing the book of the same title by Ruha Benjamin: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2345100

2) Hannah L. Westwood's review titled, "‘Blood Money’: A Cultural History of the Menstrual Economy," reviewing 'Cash Flow: The Businesses of Menstruation' by Camilla Mørk Røstvik: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2304846

3) Amy Whiteside's review titled, "Confronting Boot Strap Feminism," reviewing 'Confidence Culture' by Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2304881

An excerpt from the beginning of each book review can be found in the corresponding images.

You can also find these book reviews in the print edition of Issue 5, specifically:
1) Kemigisa's review "Viral Justice: How We Grow the World
We Want" on pages 891-894
2) Westwood's review "‘Blood Money’: A Cultural History of the Menstrual Economy" on pages 894-896
3) Whiteside's review "Confronting Boot Strap Feminism" on pages 896-899

We will be sharing another post with two additional book reviews next week; in the meantime, we would like to thank Jackline F Kemigisa, Hannah L. Westwood, and Amy Whiteside for their book review contributions.

11/12/2024

The eighth and final article in Volume 38, Issue 5 of Cultural Studies—a special issue co-edited by Marian Burchardt and Nur Yasemin Ural about "The Future of Religious Pasts: Religion and Cultural Heritage-Making in a Secular Age"—is Paulina Kolata's "Cloned Buddhas: Mapping Out the DNA of Buddhist Heritage Preservation."

Here is the abstract for Kolata's article:
"This article considers how technological innovation transforms the value of religious materiality in Buddhist heritage reproduction projects in Japan. To illustrate the religiously and politically charged landscape of heritage care, I focus on the reproduction technologies developed by the Tokyo University of Arts researchers to create highly precise replicas of Buddhist heritage. One such ‘super clone’ replica of Japan’s National Treasure homed at Hōryūji temple in Nara – a 1400-year-old ‘Shaka Triad’ sculpture of Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha – was put on display at the Nagano Prefectural Art Museum in Japan in April 2021. The ‘cloned’ statue is a highly precise copy that goes beyond the practices of exact duplication. With the use of 3D measurement, digital modelling technologies, and advanced casting techniques, this cloned religious heritage object transports the viewer back in time to the aesthetic moment of creation and allows them to experience anew the object’s affective presence as crafted centuries ago. In drawing on this example and its potential to intervene in other religious heritage reproduction projects globally, I argue that technology transforms religious heritage to generate alternative socio-economic afterlives of Buddhist objects. By analysing the scientific narratives and processes of heritage care, I show how the religious heritage reproduction is where the aesthetic, political, and economic dimensions of Buddhist material futures are imagined and realized. It is also a space of contestation between devotion, science, and memory-oriented practices of care in transnational heritage preservation."

This article is open access, so we would like to invite you to read Kolata's work online regardless of your current subscription status: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2024.2363187

Subscribers with print editions of Issue 5 can find this article on pages 865-890.

This post concludes our series highlighting the eight articles from our special issue on "The Future of Religious Pasts: Religion and Cultural Heritage-Making in a Secular Age." Thank you for sharing this space with us.

We hope you will continue following along to learn more about each of the five book reviews included in Issue 5 and the artist behind the cover art, , in the following weeks.

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Cultural Studies, Past & Present

Cultural Studies began life in 1987 as the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies, serving a small but highly engaged community of scholars interested in producing politically-engaged intellectual work, much of it focusing on popular culture and everyday practices. As the sources of our manuscript traffic expanded far beyond Australia, the UK, and the US, the journal grew from a modest intersection into a bustling global crossroads. Today, Cultural Studies is one of our publisher’s flagship publications in the humanities and social sciences.

Cultural Studies’ mission is to engage in sustained empirical investigation, in an effort to theorize the complex connections between culture, technology, media/infrastructure, religion, the state, the law, the war machine, economics and industry, the natural world, and other, perhaps less well-established, aspects of reality. The mandate, always, is to eschew the formalism and reductionism that too often lead the way in neighboring fields of study. As Stuart Hall long ago observed, the work of cultural studies happens best in the “twilight zone between disciplines.”