The location of Cultural Studies: a contextually contingent account of Cultural Studies’ praxis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cultural Studies’ ‘institutional presence’ in higher education is well documented; however, less well understood are nuances between different institutional ‘types’ and the way that Cultural Studies is variously taught and practiced in these settings. This paper will explore the authors’ experiences of teaching with Cultural Studies in Australian regional universities and the opportunities that Cultural Studies presents in these ‘peripheral’ locations. Arguing that predominant accounts of Cultural Studies’ practice derive from institutional settings where a recognised disciplinary presence is evident, this paper will chart what it means to enact Cultural Studies in locations where the disciplinary presence is not so visible. We suggest that enactments of Cultural Studies in these settings demonstrate innovative activations of practice that affordgenerative possibility for the discipline. The ways that Cultural Studies comes to be done in these contexts provide useful prompts for considering the possibilities that Cultural Studies provokes pedagogically, as a contextually contingent intellectual project.