AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES

AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES
Cultural studies refers to the notion that the study of cultural processes is theoretically and politically important to an active and productive understanding of the ways in which power and influence manifest themselves in social or political order. The historical roots of cultural studies mainly take us to Britain and its Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. In Britain, cultural studies in the early days was marked by class, later by gender, race or sexuality and later still by membership of a subculture. The British cultural studies is centred around race, ethnicism and colonizer’s identity. But cultural studies is not just seen in context with the British scenario. It has developed in different nations (Australia, America, Canada, Africa, Italy, etc.) and these nations have their own version of cultural studies. In USA, cultural studies was founded by James Carey, Lawrence Grossberg and George Lipsitz who brought it from Britain to America. Some versions of British cultural studies have been pursued in USA yet it has come to mean something different in USA than in Britain. In USA, cultural studies is influenced by the left-wing intellectual tradition which can be seen in the works of seminal feminist Betty Friedan and Marxian sociologist C. Wright Mills. The work of Michael Denning has also been influential in shaping the field of American studies by importing and interpreting the work of British cultural studies. His works are significantly influenced by Stuart Hall with whom he had spent time at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In his book ‘The Cultural Front ‘, Michael Denning has attempted to provide the American genealogy for cultural studies by reconsidering the popular art of the 1930s and 1940s. He has captured in it, the legacy of 30s Popular Front intellectuals for cultural studies. They were the thinkers who were important and influential to the development of post-war American studies. Earlier, in US there were all sorts of constituency units- African American studies, Women’s studies, Chicano studies, Gay and Lesbian studies, etc. –which displayed the interdisciplinary claims of American studies with politicized as well as fractious practice. Cultural studies appeared in US much later (around 1980s) as compared to other countries (such as Australia and Canada) and so these constituency oriented , politicized and interdisciplinary endeavors were bound to have a much greater claim and impact in US.

Cultural studies in USA can mean the study of popular culture