Cultural Studies - A Routledge Journal

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.

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."

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.

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.