Cultural Studies

This entry explains that cultural studies is, by design, too diverse and heterogeneous a project to be reduced to a single methodology. It goes on to offer a brief definition of project, and to describe four of its major characteristics: (i) its leftist politics, (ii) its radical contextualism, (iii) its radical interdisciplinarity, and (iv) its focus on articulations. It concludes by suggesting that the best way to learn how to do cultural studies is to immerse oneself in two strands of literature: (i) the sizable meta-discourse about the general shape and state of cultural studies as a project, and (ii) the broad range of research books that are examples of cultural studies “in action.”