Bashful, cryptic, or something else altogether - I'm not sure what the reason is, but Cultural Critique doesn't have much information about itself posted online.
Perhaps not bashful, since one of the few statements the journal does offer includes the term "path-breaking." Its scope and content are meant to be "international," engaging in "cultural analysis" and "[e]mphasizing critique rather than criticism." It's unclear what precisely is meant by this last distinction. It's left up to the reader to discover that through reading through essays the journal has published.
There seems to be a fair amount of breadth in what the journal is willing to cover, anything involving "culture, theory, and politics," it seems, from analysis of media texts and cultural issues, to close readings of theory and dialog with theoretical frameworks (including "Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, political economy, and hermeneutics"). In addition to essays they regularly publish fairly substantial book reviews with an explicit emphasis on work that might not get reviewed elsewhere.
The journal has three main editors, all from University of Minnesota, and Cultural Critique is, in fact, housed in Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. The larger editorial collective mostly comprises American scholars but includes a couple from elsewhere (UK, Canada).
Although our understanding is that the journal is peer-reviewed, the website doesn't say so. Unsolicited manuscripts seem to be welcome, but allow for a minimum four-month response to contributions.
Cultural Critique publishes three times a year, and since it's onto issue 75 now it's probablyt 25 years old, though again, the website doesn't say.
They do have a sense of their readership though, and state that the journal is subscribed to by:
"Academics and students in English, cultural studies, drama, literary theory, language studies, sociology, political science, and comparative literature."
There are themed issues but also many issues with no particular focus. Essay topics range widely. But in general there seems to be an emphasis on issues and theories more than texts.
Showing posts with label academic journals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academic journals. Show all posts
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
Continuum is the journal affiliated with the Cultural Studies Association of Australia (CSAA).
They've been around for a couple of decades, publishing around 6 peer-reviewed issues a year. They claim to be a venue for new voices and renowned scholars, looking at "new areas for investigation" and "new agendas for enquiry." The papers they print might engage with teaching or thinking about media and culture, but they're generally expected to focus on the "relationship between media texts and wider questions of culture."
Stated themes and issues:
As all the above suggests, the articles in the journal tend to hone in on particular media texts as an entry point into broader cultural and social issues, but in a way that reads these texts not simply as indicators or symptoms but looks at the kind of work they do and how they do it. The emphasis on media tends to lead to a lot work (including themed issues) on various facets of popular culture, particularly film and television.
They've been around for a couple of decades, publishing around 6 peer-reviewed issues a year. They claim to be a venue for new voices and renowned scholars, looking at "new areas for investigation" and "new agendas for enquiry." The papers they print might engage with teaching or thinking about media and culture, but they're generally expected to focus on the "relationship between media texts and wider questions of culture."
Stated themes and issues:
- communities, publics, nations
- taste and value
- international mediascapes
- policy, industry, academic interventions
- disciplinary issues in history, media studies, cultural studies, philosophy, visual arts
- technologies, identities, cultures
As all the above suggests, the articles in the journal tend to hone in on particular media texts as an entry point into broader cultural and social issues, but in a way that reads these texts not simply as indicators or symptoms but looks at the kind of work they do and how they do it. The emphasis on media tends to lead to a lot work (including themed issues) on various facets of popular culture, particularly film and television.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Social Text – some collected thoughts
After perusing the Social Text website, multiple recent abtracts, and a few articles (including the 30-year anniversary introduction) we have emerged with a few general impressions about the journal.
Social Text seems to be particularly invested in examinations of concrete political issues and events, often alongside the generation or discovery of new archives to investigate. However, there seems to be an ongoing, or at least recurring methodological debate, about the role and usefulness of formal analysis in relation to cultural and social theory. Cultural objects seem to serve primarily as starting points for reflections and critiques (on/of ideology, power, etc.).
The way the journal operates through an editorial collective (eschewing anonymous peer review) has changed over time but remains a distinguishing feature. It's hard to determine, without doing further research, the composition of the current collective or what impact this has on what the journal publishes.
According to the introduction we read, the journal has sustained its interest in the "politics of academic labour," the "complexities of war and imperialism," postcolonial theory and queer theory, while debates focusing on mass culture or postmodernism seem to have fallen by the wayside (17) – the latter inevitably(?) tied up with the misleading Sokal incident of 1996.
There appears to be little explicit referencing of Marxism in what the journal publishes now, but its Marxist origins might be glimpsed in its continued emphasis on material and empirical matters. Though Social Text still describes itself in terms of the leading edge it probably lies much closer to the centre now in terms of cultural studies scholarship and research. Key words like "globalization," "diaspora," "corporate culture" and "transnational history" seem to reflect predominant more than groundbreaking concerns in contemporary cultural studies.
This last point led us to broader, open-ended questions about the role of journals in contemporary academia and the inherent conventionalism of a standard print journal of academic essays. Food for future thought...
Social Text seems to be particularly invested in examinations of concrete political issues and events, often alongside the generation or discovery of new archives to investigate. However, there seems to be an ongoing, or at least recurring methodological debate, about the role and usefulness of formal analysis in relation to cultural and social theory. Cultural objects seem to serve primarily as starting points for reflections and critiques (on/of ideology, power, etc.).
The way the journal operates through an editorial collective (eschewing anonymous peer review) has changed over time but remains a distinguishing feature. It's hard to determine, without doing further research, the composition of the current collective or what impact this has on what the journal publishes.
According to the introduction we read, the journal has sustained its interest in the "politics of academic labour," the "complexities of war and imperialism," postcolonial theory and queer theory, while debates focusing on mass culture or postmodernism seem to have fallen by the wayside (17) – the latter inevitably(?) tied up with the misleading Sokal incident of 1996.
There appears to be little explicit referencing of Marxism in what the journal publishes now, but its Marxist origins might be glimpsed in its continued emphasis on material and empirical matters. Though Social Text still describes itself in terms of the leading edge it probably lies much closer to the centre now in terms of cultural studies scholarship and research. Key words like "globalization," "diaspora," "corporate culture" and "transnational history" seem to reflect predominant more than groundbreaking concerns in contemporary cultural studies.
This last point led us to broader, open-ended questions about the role of journals in contemporary academia and the inherent conventionalism of a standard print journal of academic essays. Food for future thought...
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