Cultural studies and critical literacies

This article introduces a special issue on the topic of 'Cultural Studies and Critical Literacies'. The collection of articles is related to the central theme of the inaugural Summer Institute of the Association for Cultural Studies: to explore the implications of studying literacy by combining perspectives from cultural studies and (critical) literacy studies. Furthermore, with this issue we want to map current trends in cultural studies by sharing and extending some of the discussions that took place at the Institute with the larger cultural studies community. In this introductory article, we will start by revisiting some of the work done at the intersection of literacy studies and cultural studies to set the scene for our collection of articles that focuses on different contemporary 'uses' of literacy.