Tuesday, September 28, 2010

journals and new knowledge, part 1: Social Text

For the year and a bit we've been active, we CSRG folks have been organizing our ongoing reading and discussions thematically, focusing on particular trends and topics in contemporary cultural studies. So far that has meant spending some time trying to get a handle on how cultural studies sees itself now, intersections between cultural studies and science, and critical studies of popular culture.

This fall, we will be looking at journals, e-journals and new media sites that publish contemporary scholarship in the field (as well as developing a list of such sources). We're interested in the various ways in which questions in cultural studies are being approached and researched (and also in looking at what is left out of these approaches), which questions seem most pressing within the field and which aren't being asked. Can we see a strong consensus on what counts as new knowledge or original research in cultural studies? What types of research (ethnography, for example, or textual analysis) are being privileged or, perhaps, marginalized?

Our starting point for this exploration is the journal Social Text, taking our cue from last week's listening adventure in the form of a podcast by Toby Miller (see "tobymiller's culturalstudies #1"). Miller identifies Social Text (a journal he has been affiliated with) as a pre-eminent publication in cultural studies, and you'll find a similar claim in the journal's own "about" statement as well. Have a look around the Social Text website, and browse through some recent tables of contents and abstracts. If you have time, read the 27.3 (2009) anniversary editorial by Brent Hayes Edwards and Anna McCarthy (available online through our library catalogue), which gives some background about the journal as an organization. Try to keep in mind some of the questions above and come prepared to talk about what Social Text's version of cultural studies looks like.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

A Preliminary List of Cultural Studies Journals

Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
Angelaki “was established in September 1993 to provide an international forum for vanguard work in the theoretical humanities. In itself a contentious category, 'theoretical humanities' represents the productive nexus of work in the disciplinary fields of literary criticism and theory, philosophy, and cultural studies. The journal is dedicated to the refreshing of intellectual coordinates, and to the challenging and vivifying process of re-thinking.”

ariel
ariel “is a refereed journal devoted to the critical and scholarly study of the new and the established literatures in English around the world. It welcomes particularly articles on the relationships among the new literatures and between the new and the established literatures. ariel is published four times a year.”

boundary 2
“Extending beyond the postmodern, boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture, approaches problems in these areas from a number of politically, historically, and theoretically informed perspectives. boundary 2 remains committed to understanding the present and approaching the study of national and international culture and politics through literature and the human sciences.”

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies “is a journal founded in 2004 that publishes scholarship for an international readership on communication as a theory, practice, technology, and discipline of power. The journal features critical inquiry that cuts across academic boundaries to focus on social, political, and cultural practices from the standpoint of communication. It promotes critical reflection on the requirements of a more democratic culture by giving attention to subjects such as, but not limited to, class, race, ethnicity, gender, ability, sexuality, polity, public sphere, nation, environment, and globalization.”

Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
Continuum is an academic journal of media and cultural studies. For over two decades it has contributed to the formation of these disciplines by identifying new areas for investigation and developing new agendas for enquiry in the fields. The journal has consistently provided a space for important new voices in media and cultural studies, while also featuring the work of internationally renowned scholars. Continuum is now one of the most highly regarded and most cited journals in media and cultural studies.”

Critical Inquiry
Critical Inquiry “has published the best critical thought in the arts and humanities since 1974. Combining a commitment to rigorous scholarship with a vital concern for dialogue and debate, the journal presents articles by eminent critics, scholars, and artists on a wide variety of issues central to contemporary criticism and culture. In Critical Iinquiry new ideas and reconsideration of those traditional in criticism and culture are granted a voice. The wide interdisciplinary focus creates surprising juxtapositions and linkages of concepts, offering new grounds for theoretical debate.”


Cultural Critique
Cultural Critique brings together some of the most important work within cultural analysis, investigating culture from a theoretically broad perspective and from an international point of view. Cultural Critique provides a forum for international and interdisciplinary explorations of intellectual controversies, trends, and issues in culture, theory, and politics. Emphasizing critique rather than criticism, the journal draws on the diverse and conflictual approaches of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, political economy, and hermeneutics to offer readings in society and its tranformation.”


Cultural Studies
Cultural Studies “is an international journal which explores the relation between cultural practices, everyday life, material, economic, political, geographical and historical contexts. It fosters more open analytic, critical and political conversations by encouraging people to push the dialogue into fresh, uncharted territory. It also aims to intervene in the processes by which the existing techniques, institutions and structures of power are reproduced, resisted and transformed.”

Culture, Theory and Critique
Culture, Theory and Critique “is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal for the transformation and development of critical theories in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique's approach to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridisation via recontextualisation and transculturation.”

differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies

differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies “first appeared in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter—a head-on collision, one might say—of theories of difference (primarily Continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). In the ensuing years, the journal has established a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference—notably but not exclusively gender—operate within culture.”

English Studies in Canada
English Studies in Canada (ESC) “publishes articles on topics that fall into the disciplinary purview of "English studies" broadly understood. In addition to literary criticism, the journal welcomes articles that take up the methodologies of cultural studies, critical theory, and interdisciplinary studies. ESC also publishes review articles, book reviews, and readers' forums on matters of interest to the discipline.”

European Journal of Cultural Studies
European Journal of Cultural Studies “is a major journal based in Europe which promotes a conception of cultural studies rooted in lived experience. The journal adopts a broad-ranging view of cultural studies, charting new questions and new research, and mapping the transformation of cultural studies in the years to come. The journal is interdisciplinary bringing together articles from a textual, philosophical and social scientific background, as well as from cultural studies. It engages in critical discussions on power relations concerning gender, class, sexual preference, ethnicity and other macro or micro sites of political struggle.”


Feminist Media Studies
Feminist Media Studies “provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.”

Film Journal International
Film Journal International, “celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2009, is a trade publication and website covering the motion picture industry, with special emphasis on theatrical exhibition. Articles report on U.S. and international news, with features on upcoming movies, industry trends, theatre design, equipment, concessions, digital cinema, sound, screen advertising, and other industry-related topics. Additional issues contain special guides to international distribution and exhibition, as well as equipment and concessions for the motion picture industry.”

Film Quarterly
“Combining the best of scholarship and journalism since 1959, Film Quarterly publishes wide-ranging, well-crafted, incisive, and detailed writing for thoughtful movie lovers. http://www.filmquarterly.org/images/spacer.gifIn Film Quarterly, you will find: http://www.filmquarterly.org/images/spacer.gifIn-depth review essays on major recent films; Punchy, provocative columnists; Commentary on digital technology and online moving images; Coverage of television, documentary, and the avant-garde; An unrivalled book review section; Contributions from filmmakers; Debate and argument about what matters in film culture.”

Globalizations
Globalizations “seeks to publish the best work exploring new meanings of globalization, bringing fresh ideas to the concept, broadening its scope, and contributing to shaping the debates of the future. Globalizations is dedicated to opening the widest possible space for discussion of alternatives to a narrow economic understanding of globalization. The move from the singular to the plural is deliberate and implies skepticism of the idea that there can ever be a single theory or interpretation of globalization. Rather, the journal will seek to encourage the exploration and discussion of multiple interpretations and multiple processes that may constitute many possible globalizations, many possible alternatives.”

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
“The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television is an interdisciplinary journal concerned with the evidence produced by the mass media for historians and social scientists, and with the impact of mass communications on the political and social history of the twentieth century. The needs of those engaged in research and teaching are served by scholarly articles, book reviews and by archival reports concerned with the preservation and availability of records. The journal also reviews films, television and radio programmes of historical or educational importance. In addition, it aims to provide a survey of developments in the teaching of history and social science courses which involve the use of film and broadcast materials.”

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Identitiesexplores the relationship of racial, ethnic and national identities and power hierarchies within national and global arenas. It examines the collective representations of social, political, economic and cultural boundaries as aspects of processes of domination, struggle and resistance, and it probes the unidentified and unarticulated class structures and gender relations that remain integral to both maintaining and challenging subordination. The journal illuminates the relationship between culture and power and transports the field of ethnic studies beyond descriptions of cultural diversity.”

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies “gives a long overdue voice, throughout the global intellectual community, to those concerned with inter-Asia processes. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies includes discussion, reports and analysis from global critical circles, and especially from marginalised sites, with the aim of enhancing the communication and exchange between inter-Asia and other regions of the cultural studies world.”

International Journal of Cultural Studies
International Journal of Cultural Studiesprovides a lively meeting-place for international perspectives on cultural and media developments across the globe. The journal features theoretical, empirical and historical research which is based in local and regional realities, and deals with everyday practices, identities, media, texts and cultural forms. It publishes work which suggests new directions, ideas and modes of inquiry to reinvigorate cultural studies for a new generation of researchers and readers.”

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies “is a specialist peer-reviewed journal focusing on the following aspects of postcolonial research, theory and politics: The histories of imperialism and colonialism; The role of culture (academic, literary and popular) in the operation of imperialism and in the formations of national resistance; Liberation struggles, past and ongoing; The role of religion and culture in new nationalisms; The contemporary politics of identity, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality; The economics of neo-colonialism; Diaspora and migrancy; Indigenous fourth-world cultures; The connections between colonialism and modernity, postcolonialism and postmodernism.”

Journal of African Cultural Studies
“The Journal of African Cultural Studies is an international journal providing a forum for perceptions of African culture from inside and outside Africa, with a special commitment to African scholarship. It focuses on dimensions of African culture including African literatures both oral and written, performance arts, visual arts, music, the role of the media, the relationship between culture and power, as well as issues within such fields as popular culture in Africa, sociolinguistic topics of cultural interest, and culture and gender.”

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Journal of Intercultural Studies “showcases innovative scholarship about emerging cultural formations, intercultural negotiations and contemporary challenges to cultures and identities. Journal of Intercultural Studies welcomes theoretically informed articles from diverse disciplines that contribute to the following discussions: Reconceptualising notions of nationhood, citizenship and racialisation; Questioning theories of diaspora, transnationalism, hybridity and 'border crossing' and their contextualised applications; Exploring the contemporary sociocultural formations of ethnicity, postcolonialism and indigeneity; Examining how past and contemporary key scholars can inform current thinking on cross-cultural knowledge, multiculturalism, race and cultural identity.

Journal of Popular Culture
“The popular culture movement was founded on the principle that the perspectives and experiences of common folk offer compelling insights into the social world.  The fabric of human social life is not merely the art deemed worthy to hang in museums, the books that have won literary prizes or been named "classics," or the religious and social ceremonies carried out by societies' elite.  The Journal of Popular Culture continues to break down the barriers between so-called "low" and "high" culture and focuses on filling in the gaps that a neglect of popular culture has left in our understanding of the workings of society.”

Journal of Popular Film and Television
“How did Casablanca affect the home front during World War II? What is the postfeminist significance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The Journal of Popular Film and Television answers such far-ranging questions by using the methods of popular culture studies to examine commercial film and television, historical and contemporary. Articles discuss networks, genres, series, and audiences, as well as celebrity stars, directors, and studios. Regular features include essays on the social and cultural background of films and television programs, filmographies, bibliographies, and commissioned book and video reviews.”

Media, Culture, Society
Media, Culture & Societyprovides a major international forum for the presentation of research and discussion concerning the media, including the newer information and communication technologies, within their political, economic, cultural and historical contexts. The journal is interdisciplinary, regularly engaging with a wider range of issues in cultural and social analysis. Its focus is on substantive topics and on critique and innovation in theory and method.”

Mediations
“Published twice yearly, Mediations is the journal of the Marxist Literary Group. We publish dossiers of translated material on special topics and peer-reviewed general issues, usually in alternation.”

New Formations
new formations “has established a reputation nationally and internationally as Britain's most significant interdisciplinary journal of culture, politics and theory. It brings new and challenging perspectives of cultural analysis to bear on the cutting edge of politics. Always at the forefront of intellectual debate, new formations has covered issues ranging from the seduction of perversity to questions of nationalism and post-colonialism.”

New Left Review
“Established for forty years as a key journal of the international Left, NLR has been transformed since 2000 into a new resource for the new century. Its range covers world politics and the global economy; state powers and protest movements; contemporary social theory; history and philosophy; cinema and literature; heterodox art and aesthetics. It stands resolutely opposed to Third Way pieties and neoliberal prescriptions, combating capital's current apologists with sharp and scholarly analysis, internationalist critique, polemic and experiential prose.”

October
“At the forefront of art criticism and theory, October focuses critical attention on the contemporary arts and their various contexts of interpretation: film, painting, music, media, photography, performance, sculpture, and literature. Examining relationships between the arts and their critical and social contexts, October addresses a broad range of readers. Original, innovative, provocative, each issue presents the best, most current texts by and about today's artistic, intellectual and critical vanguard.”

Parallax
“Founded in 1995, parallax has established an international reputation for bringing together outstanding new work in cultural studies, critical theory and philosophy. parallax publishes themed issues that aim to provoke exploratory, interdisciplinary thinking and response. Each issue of parallax provides a forum for a wide spectrum of perspectives on a topical question or concern. parallax will be of interest to those working in cultural studies, critical theory, cultural history, philosophy, gender studies, queer theory, post-colonial theory, English and comparative literature, aesthetics, art history and visual cultures.”

Public Culture
In the twenty years of its existence, Public Culture has established itself as a prize-winning, field-defining cultural studies journal. Public Culture seeks a critical understanding of the global cultural flows and the cultural forms of the public sphere which define the late twentieth century. As such, the journal provides a forum for the discussion of the places and occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public phenomena, manifested in everything from highly particular and localized events in popular or folk culture to global advertising, consumption, and information networks.”

Quarterly Review of Film and Video
Quarterly Review of Film and Video “publishes critical, historical, and theoretical essays, book reviews, and interviews in the area of moving image studies including film, video, and digital imagery studies.Our scope is international and interdisciplinary. Contributions from diverse critical, theoretical, and historical perspectives are welcomed.”

Resources for Feminist Research/ Documentation sur la recherche féministe
“Resources for Feminist Research / Documentation sur la recherche fĂ©ministe is a bilingual (English/French) Canadian scholarly journal published since 1972 in the Centre for Women's Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education / University of Toronto. RFR/DRF addresses Canadian and international feminist research issues and debates. The journal's objectives are to publish critical work addressing a broad range of issues relevant to feminist theory and activism, provide an educational resource and a forum for the communication of ideas, news, and other information of interest to the community of feminist scholars, and to encourage research on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality and class, and how they inform and affect the conditions of women's lives.”

Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies
The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studiesis the only journal which publishes critical essays that explore pedagogy and its relation to a wide variety of political, social, cultural and economic issues. It is particularly concerned with issues focusing on how pedagogy works within and across a variety of sites (not limited to formal spaces of education, but including popular culture, museums, film, and other cultural spaces) and how pedagogical practices emerge out of specific historical struggles, concrete projects, and particular relations of power. The journal is interdisciplinary, and addresses the relationship of race, class, age and gender to particular projects, struggles, and issues.”

Social Text
Social Text “covers a broad spectrum of social and cultural phenomena, applying the latest interpretive methods to the world at large. A daring and controversial leader in the field of cultural studies, the journal consistently focuses attention on questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment, publishing key works by the most influential social and cultural theorists. As a journal at the forefront of cultural theory, Social Text invites provocative interviews and challenging articles from emerging critical voices. Each issue breaks new ground in the debates about postcolonialism, postmodernism, and popular culture.”

Social Identities
Recent years have witnessed considerable worldwide changes concerning social identities such as race, nation and ethnicity, as well as the emergence of new forms of racism and nationalism as discriminatory exclusions. Social Identities aims to furnish an interdisciplinary and international focal point for theorizing issues at the interface of social identities.The journal is especially concerned to address these issues in the context of the transforming political economies and cultures of postmodern and postcolonial conditions. Social Identities is intended as a forum for contesting ideas and debates concerning the formations of, and transformations in, socially significant identities, their attendant forms of material exclusion and power, as well as the political and cultural possibilities opened up by these identifications.

South Atlantic Quarterly
“Founded amid controversy in 1901, the South Atlantic Quarterly continues to cover the beat, center and fringe, with bold analyses of the current scene—national, cultural, intellectual—worldwide. Now published exclusively in special issues, this vanguard centenarian journal is tackling embattled states, evaluating postmodernity's influential writers and intellectuals, and examining a wide range of cultural phenomena.”

Space and Culture
Space and Culture brings together dynamic, critical interdisciplinary research at the interface of cultural geography, sociology, cultural studies, architectural theory, ethnography, communications, urban studies, environmental studies and discourse analysis. Space and Culture's unique focus is on social spaces, such as the home, laboratory, leisure spaces, the city, and virtual spaces. In every issue, Space and Culture explores and critiques everyday life in contemporary cities, environment, and new media.”

Substance
Substance is a major interdisciplinary journal with a long-standing reputation for publishing innovative work on literature and culture. While its main focus has been on French literature and continental theory, the journal is known for its openness to original thinking in all the discourses that interact with literature, including philosophy, natural and social sciences, and the arts. Join the discerning readers of Substance who enjoy crossing borders and challenging limits.”

Television and New Media
Television & New Media “is a new international journal devoted to the most recent trends in television and new media studies. TVNM addresses questions of how issues of economics and power are enacted in television. The journal focuses on textual analysis, political economy, cultural history, policy advocacy, audience ethnography, and economic and power issues that have an impact on the media.”

Theory, Culture & Society
Theory, Culture & Society is a highly ranked, high impact factor, rigorously peer reviewed journal that publishes original research and review articles in the social and cultural sciences. Launched in 1982 to cater for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science, Theory, Culture & Society provides a forum for articles which theorize the relationship between culture and society. Theory, Culture & Society is at the cutting edge of recent developments in social and cultural theory. The journal has helped to break down some of the disciplinary barriers between the humanities and the social sciences by opening up a wide range of new questions in cultural theory.”

Theory and Society
“The journal Theory and Society publishes theoretically-informed analyses of social processes, providing a forum for an international community of scholars. It opens its pages to authors working at the frontiers of social analysis, regardless of discipline. The coverage ranges across a broad landscape, from prehistory to contemporary affairs, from treatments of individuals to nations to world culture, from discussions of theory to methodological critique, from First World to Third World. The effort is always to bring together theory, criticism and concrete observation.”

Third Text
Third Text “is an international scholarly journal dedicated to providing critical perspectives on art and visual culture. The journal examines the theoretical and historical ground by which the West legitimises its position as the ultimate arbiter of what is significant within this field. Established in 1987, the journal provides a forum for the discussion and (re)appraisal of theory and practice of art, art history and criticism, and the work of artists hitherto marginalised through racial, gender, religious and cultural differences. Dealing with diversity of art practices - visual arts, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, video and film - Third Text addresses the complex cultural realities that emerge when different worldviews meet, and the challenge this poses to Eurocentrism and ethnocentric aesthetic criteria.”

Monday, September 20, 2010

First Meeting, Fall 2010

The first meeting of the CSRG will be on Wed. Sept. 22 at 4:30 in CNH 207. We're asking those interested in participating to listen to an episode of a new podcast called culturalstudies, which you can find at: http://culturalstudies.podbean.com/ The episode we'll be discussing is the inaugural post, called "tobymiller's culturalstudies #1" posted on July 30, 2010 (find it in the archives).Hope to see you there!