This collection of essays explores the idea of the efficacy, limitations and future of Cultural Studies as a theoretical and methodological approach to the analysis of recent crisis phenomena in Europe. The volume spans a wide range of topics, including: theoretical and critical approaches to the stability of the EU as a political and economic union of its 28 member
states; the (not only) recent flow of refugees into Europe and other countries, and the refugee tragedies off the coast of Lampedusa; the resurgence of far-right, anti-Islam political groups throughout Europe; the negotiation of affect and crisis phenomena in literary texts; and the question of media and refugees. These and other pressing issues are addressed and discussed from a variety of historical, political, pedagogical, gender, media and aesthetic perspectives, as encompassed in Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Literatures.
The aim of the volume is to arrive at a new working definition of Cultural Studies – making culture political again – in conjunction with Postcolonial and Gender Studies within a European context. Thus, the papers offer a fresh approach for a discussion of crisis phenomena in the context of complex encounters and conflicts, new regionalisms, emergency diasporas, gender studies, and neo-capitalism/neo-colonialism within a German-Italian framework and beyond.
Cecile Sandten
Cecile Sandten is Chair of English Literatures at the Chemnitz University of Technology.
Cultural Studies Europe Populism Postcolonial Literature crisis phenomena emergency diasporas gender studies neo-capitalism new regionalism