title: Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History (Stuart Hall: Selected Writings)
author: Stuart Hall
description: <DIV>&quot;Hall&rsquo;s lectures from 1983 appear to be a peculiar event of appropriation&mdash;a fundamental attempt to retain Marx as a nondisposable basis for cultural studies by means of a meticulous, well-informed, and earnest guarding of his heritage from vulgar and reductive misreadings. The volume itself is a praiseworthy enterprise of retaining this hallmark of theoretical history and making accessible at least some of Hall&rsquo;s works, otherwise scattered across less-known collections and anthologies.&quot;.<BR /> &#160;</DIV> (Sergiy Yakovenko <i>H-Russia, H-Net Reviews</i> 2017-01-18)<br /><br /><DIV>&quot;The collection is inspiring and comprehensive, covering, for example, the birth of Cultural Studies, Marxist structuralism and Hall&rsquo;s crucial post-Gramscian work on hegemony. . . . Hall&rsquo;s collection of lectures is persuasive, galvanising and feels both timeless and timely, despite its posthumous status.&quot;<BR /> &#160;</DIV> (Sofia Ropek Hewson <i>LSE Review of Books</i> 2017-03-13)<br /><br /><DIV>&quot;Hall&#39;s metier was to tease out the competing histories, the contradictory political, economic, and social forces condensed within a particular historical moment, an excavation of ideology he called &#39;conjunctural analysis.&#39; . . . [H]is work is all too timely, for the haphazard project of neoliberalism, justified retroactively by nonsensical appeals to the &#39;free market,&#39; is as advanced as the decades-long economic decline it magics away with bubbles and rhetoric (GDP balloons; personal wealth stagnates).&quot;</DIV> (Michael Robbins <i>Bookforum</i> 2017-04-01)<br /><br /><DIV>&quot;<I>Cultural Studies 1983</I> is a cogent summation of the most influential modern theories that have grappled with and tried to explain the dynamics of unequal societies and the cultures they produced.&quot;&#160;</DIV> (Shonaleeka Kaul <i>Frontline</i> 2017-08-18)<br /><br /><DIV>&quot;Hall&rsquo;s work has become especially resonant as Britain has voted for a narrower identity and a more isolationist attitude to the rest of the world.... There is a generosity and literary imagination in his writing&mdash;a recognition that humans are complex, contradictory creatures shaped by, among other things, what they believe, where they live, how they shop, and who they sleep with.&quot;</DIV> (Jessica Loudis <i>The New Republic</i> 2017-09-27)<br /><br /><DIV>&quot;<I>Cultural Studies 1983</I> performs two important tasks: it recreates a sense of the spark that kindled a moment long remembered in Cultural Studies and related fields; more importantly, it offers access into an incredibly rich body of thought that has as much to teach today as it did three and a half decades ago.... Thanks to <I>Cultural Studies 1983</I> and Duke University Press&rsquo;s<I> Stuart Hall: Selected Writings</I> series, we have a new trove of proven tools when perhaps we need them most.&quot;</DIV> (John Munro <i>History</i> 2017-10-27)<br /><br /><DIV>&quot;The late Stuart Hall was more than an intellectual giant of postwar Britain. He was the great illuminator, whose far-reaching insights into how the world is constructed show us why cultural studies is not about the manners learned from the masters, but a way of examining and understanding social reality as made by the people themselves. Argumentative, diagnostic, witty, and learned, the series of scintillating lectures contained in this volume presents Hall at the height of his fearless and generous scholarly powers, offering not only a history of cultural studies but a theoretical and politically engaged reading of our unequal centuries.&quot;</DIV> (Okwui Enwezor <i>Artforum</i> 2017-12-01)
zlib_text: Stuart Hall is one of the founding ﬁgures of cultural studies. He was
  director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, famously
  coined the term ‘Thatcherism’ and assessed New Labour as the ‘Great
  Moving Nowhere Show’. One of the leading public intellectuals of
  the postwar period, he has helped transform our understanding of
  culture as both a theoretical category and a political practice. James
  Procter’s introduction places Hall’s work within its historical, cultural
  and theoretical contexts, providing a clear guide to his key ideas and
  inﬂuences, as well as to his critics and his intellectual legacy, covering
  topics such as
  •
  Popular culture and youth subcultures
  •
  The CCCS and cultural studies
  •
  Media and communication
  •
  Racism and resistance
  •
  Postmodernism and the post-colonial
  •
  Thatcherism
  •
  Identity, ethnicity, diaspora
  Stuart Hall is the ideal gateway to the work of a critic described by
  Terry Eagleton as ‘a walking chronicle of everything from the New
  Left to New Times