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External Influences and Alarming Tendencies

I particularly enjoyed reading “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall" this week—especially as sections of the piece were taken from conversations that took place here at the University of Iowa! 

The final two pages (149-150), which examined the institutionalization and codification—Stuart Hall is keen to differentiate the two terms in his response— of cultural studies in the United States encouraged me to consider the current position of cultural studies within U.S. academia. Indeed, I drew a connection between this piece and "The Last Interview: Stuart Hall on the Politics of Cultural Studies," conducted thirty years later, in which Hall stated—perhaps with a hint of frustration—that "I think a lot of people in cultural studies think we can’t just go on producing another analysis of The Sopranos."

In "On Postmodernism and Articulation" Hall states "cultural studies has to be open to external influences, for example, to the rise of new social movements, to psychoanalysis, to feminism, to cultural differences" which forms my first question: 

What external influences have moulded—and continue to shape—contemporary cultural studies?

a. In what ways do these external influences diverge in different geographical locations; for example, between the U.S. and U.K.? 

My second question is inspired by Hall's quote (146) earlier in the interview: "Perhaps I ought to say in parenthesis that I do find an alarming tendency in myself to prefer people’s less complete works to their later, mature and complete ones... I like people’s middle period a lot, where they have gotten over their adolescent idealism but their thought has not yet hardened into a system."

Does Hall's "alarming" tendency to favor the middle period of scholars' work resonate with anyone else in the class? 

Glenn H 

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