| Public Culture | |
|---|---|
| Discipline | Cultural Studies |
| Language | English |
| Publication details | |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (United States of America) |
| Publication history | 1988 - present |
| Frequency | Three issues annually |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN | 0899-2363 |
| Links | |
Public Culture is a reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal of cultural studies, founded in 1988 by anthropologists Carol Breckenridge and Arjun Appadurai. By its own account, the journal seeks to address “the cultural transformations associated with cities, media and consumption, and the cultural flows that draw cities, societies and states into larger transnational relationships and global political economies”. Among recent contributors are Charles Taylor, Asef Bayat, Dipesh Chakrabarty, George Chauncey, Jean Comaroff, Achille Mbembe, and Michael Watts.
Public Culture is currently edited at New York University and published for the Society for Transnational Cultural Studies by Duke University Press. Initially based at the University of Pennsylvania and published independently, in 1992 the journal moved to the University of Chicago, first under the editorship of Carol Breckenridge, later under Elizabeth Povinelli. In 2004, the journal moved from Chicago to New York to accompany its editor, Claudio Lomnitz, based first at The New School and from 2006, at Columbia. More recently in 2010, the journal moved to New York University under new editorial leadership. Under Lomnitz and Executive Editor Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Public Culture underwent a complete redesign and implemented three new regular sections: “Doxa at Large,” a space for shorter opinion pieces on recent events; “Arts in Circulation,” featuring reflections on innovative cultural work and on the work of art in public; and “Sites of Knowledge,” focusing on institutions that have made a significant mark on a world region.
In 2010, the journal welcomed a new editor, Eric Klinenberg, a professor of Sociology at New York University, and his new editorial committee consisting of senior editors, Andrew Lakoff, Fred Turner, and Caitlin Zaloom, and the following editorial committee members: Craig Calhoun, NYU; Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard; Manu Goswami, NYU; Greg Grandin, NYU; Bruce Grant, NYU; John Jackson, University of Pennsylvania; Johan Lindquist, Stockholm University; Eyal Press, New America Foundation/NYU; Erica Robles, NYU; Ananya Roy, UC Berkeley; Marita Sturken, NYU; and Guobin Yang, Barnard.
The journal has received recognition from several sources, including an award for Best Journal Design from the 2007 Council of Editors of Learned Journals Awards and a favorable review in the Times Literary Supplement.[1]