Cultural Studies Association

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The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) was founded in 2003 and is a non-profit membership association for scientific purposes in the field and discipline of cultural studies. Located in Chicago, IL, USA, the CSA is headed by an executive committee of American academics who guide the association's efforts to promote the exchange of ideas between scholars, hold annual conferences, and publish an educational journal.

Purpose

The goal of the CSA is to create and promote an effective community of cultural studies practitioners and scholars, to represent the discipline and its committed practitioners everywhere, and to advance cultural studies knowledges, projects, approaches, and methodologies throughout the world. Its members come from all over the world.

In the spring each year, the Cultural Studies Association holds an international annual conference. As with other professional organizations, the annual conference provides the membership an opportunity to meet and network with other professionals in the discipline, introduce students to the wider professional community, and share and discuss current efforts in cultural studies research and practice.

The Cultural Studies Association publishes its own journal, Lateral. Lateral, an e-publishing platform of the association, is a digital journal and production site designed to foster experimentation and collaboration among cultural studies practitioners and researchers. It is committed to critical studies of culture that advance and extend the reach of cultural studies as a field and method of inquiry and as an intellectual/political project.

Divisions

As of 2009, the CSA had the following divisions:^[1]

Critical Feminist Studies Critical Feminist Studies dedicates itself to work that builds upon, even as it critiques, the institutions and practices of Women's and Gender Studies, focusing in particular on transnational formations and movements, queer and sexuality studies, and politics, practices, and representations. Sarah Rasmusson and Sabrina Starnaman (co-chairs)

Culture and War The CSA Division on Culture and War is dedicated to scholarly and activist work on the cultural aspects of war and militarism, encompassing rhetoric and language, news and mass media, fictional texts and representations, documentary film and video, new media and other cultural forms. The Division welcomes interventionist and critical work on wars past and present, as well as on the everyday militarization of society, from historical, theoretical, global and interdisciplinary perspectives.^{[citation needed]} Cynthia Fuchs and Anthony Grajeda (co-chairs)

Cultural Studies and Film The Cultural Studies and Film division pursues the history and cultural politics of cinema and of related media. Approaches include film theory, ethnography, political economy, and textual analysis. Evan Heimlich (chair)

Cultural Studies and Literature Socio-historical constructions of certain pleasures, knowledge, and experience in literature are often naturalized under the rubric of "fiction." As such, the section on Cultural Studies and Literature calls for a reading of literature that highlights its historical engagement in the social construction of knowledge and interpretation of experience. Helen Kapstein and Caroline H. Yang (co-chairs)

Cultural Policy and Legal Studies The cultural policy and legal studies division is concerned with the historical and contemporary processes and institutions regulating and supporting culture in public life. Bridging practice and theory, this division welcomes scholarly and activist work that addresses the wide range of government and industry policies that shape cultural industries in global, national, and local contexts. Particular attention is paid to questions of social inequality and cultural justice. Joseph L. Terry (chair)

Environment, Space and Place The CSA Division on Environment, Space and Place spans the union of cultural studies and geography. Approaching culture as spatial allows for powerful analyses of dominance and resistance, style, consumption, identity, ideology, as well as human-environment relations. Space and place—and representations thereof in various media—both result from and reassert force on culture. The Division welcomes discussion in all areas pertaining to environment, space and place, past and present, and encourages interdisciplinary consideration of these topics. Douglas Herman (chair)

Globalisms The CSA Division on Globalisms is interested in providing a forum for the voices of the globalized. With the awareness that we are beginning en media res and that we are working with a binary system that currently is not capable of providing an accurate appraisal of either process nor product, this division hopes to be able to provide support and forum for those interested in constructing a model for thinking globally, and exploring what that means, that works without reifying old distinctions.^{[citation needed]} Lesliee Antonette (chair)

Media Interventions The Media Interventions Division provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholarship and activism related to alternative, citizens, community, and DIY media. The Division promotes theoretical development in the realm of interventionist media form, content, and practices. In addition, the Division welcomes practitioner perspectives on the intersection between cultural studies, political economy, and prefigurative media politics. Kevin Howley (chair)

Pedagogy (In Hiatus) The pedagogy division includes a focus on culture and education, cultural pedagogy, and the curriculum of cultural studies. Pedagogy, broadly conceived and critically understood in this context concerns a wide range of issues taken up in cultural studies including but not limited to mass media, popular culture, subculture, public culture, nationhood, postcolonialism, political economy, identity, race, class, gender, sexuality.

Racial and Ethnic Studies The purpose of the Racial and Ethnic Studies Division is to serve as a vehicle to mobilize the production and interrogation of research, theory, teaching, and activism directly concerned with race and ethnicity and their various dimensions (e.g., age, class, culture, economy, education, gender, history, labor, migration, nationality, politics, religion, and sexuality, among many others). Toward these ends, the encouragement of scholarly collaboration across and between disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical boundaries shall be promoted. Matthew W. Hughey (chair)

Technology The Cultural Studies Association Technology Division is concerned with critical, indepth examinations of technologies of all kinds. While technology related studies of mediated environments, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, identity, information, prosthetics, pharmaceuticals, medicine, genomics, distributed consciousness, agricultural technologies and embodiment are among some of the particular contexts investigated, we do not wish to limit the division to the study of media, popular culture and computer technologies. The division is therefore concerned with the critical examination of socio-political contextual analyses of technocultures. The division is particularly interested in the historicizing of technologies old and new, ethnographies of techno-mediated environments whether in rural, urban or digital environments. The division is interested in theory building based in the examination of technologies whether old or new, rural, urban or digital. Radhika Gajjala (chair) and Steve Luber (vice chair)

Theories of Cultural Studies The Division of Theories of Cultural Studies is interested in promoting a broad range of theoretical work that includes not only theories of culture and its practices but also theoretical work in other areas such as politics, philosophy, language and literature studies, art, etc. as they intersect with cultural studies. Henry Krips (chair)

Visual Culture The CSA Visual Culture Division represents the multi- and inter-disciplinary study of the visual as a primary site for the production and contestation of meaning. The Division is thus concerned with visual forms and visuality, including images, visual media, image technologies, surveillance, theories of spectatorship, visual experience, and visual literacy. Randal Rogers (chair)

Executive Committee

Marian Aguiar, Carnegie Mellon University (2012-2015)
S. Charusheela, University of Washington Bothell (2012-2015)
Kandice Chuh, City University of New York (2012-2015)
Rod Ferguson, University of Minnesota (2010-2014)
Christina B. Hanhardt, University of Maryland, College Park (2012-2015)
Curtis Marez, University of California, San Diego (2010-2014)
Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside (2009-2013)
Rupal Oza, Hunter College, CUNY (2012-2015)
Christina Nadler, Graduate Center, CUNY (2012-2014)
Amit Rai, Queen Mary, University of London (2009-2013)
Rashad Shabazz, University of Vermont (2012-2015)
Megan Turner, University of California, San Diego, Graduate Representative (2011-2013)

Officers

Bruce Burgett, University of Washington, Bothhell, President (2010–2012)
Jaafar Aksikas, Columbia College Chicago, Vice President (2012-2014)
Patricia Clough, City University of New York, Past President (2010–2012)
Randy Martin, New York University, Past President (2008–2010)
Sean Andrews, Columbia College Chicago, Administrative Officer and Treasurer
Robert Gehl, University of Utah, Communications and Technology Coordinator
Jamie Skye Bianco, University of Pittsburgh, Editor of Digital Platforms & LateralLab Liaison ^[2]

References

External links

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