British Cultural Studies

Abstract

One of the markers of contemporary studies in the humanities and social sciences is the close, critical attention directed onto the mass media and popular culture. British cultural studies, emerging out of the expanded English university system in the 1970s, were among the first to develop and broadly disseminate the methodologies and approaches which made such attention possible. Focusing initially on the relations between language and ideology through the close analysis of media texts, before diversifying into a broad range of interdisciplinary activities - cultural theory, cultural history, ethnography, media studies, and the analysis of the social construction of gender, race and identity - British cultural studies has played a fundamental role in establishing the conceptual and theoretical agenda for studies of popular cultural forms and practices.