An interdisciplinary approach to the study and analysis of culture understood very broadly to include not only specific texts, but also practices, and indeed ways of life. The most influential works in the field have tended to be large edited collections like Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichlerâs mammoth Cultural Studies (1991) and introductory textbooks like John Fiskeâs Reading the Popular (1989), which reflects not only the heterogeneous nature of work calling itself Cultural Studies, but the fact that in a very real sense Cultural Studies is theoretically provisional and avant-garde (its practitioners tend to be avid consumers of new concepts drawn from a wide variety of fields). Cultural Studies began in Britain in the late 1950s. Hoggart, Richardâs The Uses of Literacy (1957) is often held up as the inaugural text, with Williams, Raymondâs Culture and Society: 1780â1950 (1958) running a close second. Both these authors rejected the Leavisite model of Practical Criticism, which was largely concerned with identifying works suitable for inclusion in a highly select canon of âgreat worksâ, in favour of a more expansive view of culture. As Marxism they were both concerned to point up the importance of traditional and working class culture and to show how changes in society threatened their very existence. In contrast to practical criticism, Cultural Studies employed history and sociology as well as âclose readingâ in its analysis of cultural texts. Cultural Studies achieved institutional status in 1964 when Hoggart founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ISA). For the next decade or so the CCCS provided much of the focus for the developing field and many of the most famous names in the field were based in Birmingham at this time. Hall, Stuart succeeded Hoggart as director and (arguably) gave Cultural Studies the shape it has today by importing the then quite new and radical thinking coming out of France known as theory, e.g. structuralism semiotics, and (later) post-structuralism and theories of power as well. Britain fell into steep economic decline during the 1970s, falling so far as to require an IMF loan to staunch its currency, which of course had widespread social repercussions. Cultural Studies was at its peak documenting this, but when Thatcher came to power in 1979 it found it impossible to account for the profound swing to the right that followed. Stuart Hallâs magnificent Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (1988) is the last will and testament of this species of left-sympathetic (when not avowedly Marxist) Cultural Studies. In the 1980s Cultural Studies spread its wings and its focal point shifted to Australia, not least because many of its pioneering practitioners like Tony Bennett, John Fiske, and John Hartley migrated there. Cultural Studies flourished in Australia, becoming in two decades the dominant discipline in the humanities, at least in part because of its facility for adaptation to the demands of the so-called âreformâ of the higher education sector in the 1980s and 1990s. This came at the price of its radical roots, the previously crucial notions of dissidence and resistance all but vanished from the vocabulary, but gave rise to a discipline ready, willing, and able to work in partnership with government. Cultural Studies moved from being a discipline largely concerned with the critique of government policy (as the most explicit manifestation of power) to one that wants to help write that policy. The fieldâs principal organ, the journal Cultural Studies, began life in Australia as the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies also took root in the US thanks to the efforts of several American CCCS students (particularly Hazel Carby, Michael Denning, and Lawrence Grossberg) who brought it back home with them like an intellectual contagion. But in contrast to the situation in Australia it did not achieve hegemony. Rather it tended to be swallowed up or placed alongside the much bigger fields of area studies, race studies, African-American studies, and American studies. The fate of Cultural Studies elsewhere has been uneven---it is still resisted in most parts of Europe, particularly France and Germany, but even there it has gained a foothold. Reflecting its global spread, an international Cultural Studies association was formed in Finland in the 1990s. After more than 50 years of existence, Cultural Studies still does not have a specific methodology or a discrete area of interest: its approach tends to be needs-based, meaning that it applies theory according to the case at hand; and there is literally nothing that falls outside of the scope of Cultural Studies. And that for its detractors and supporters alike is both its strength and its weakness. Further Reading: P. Bowman Interrogating Cultural Studies: Theory, Politics and Practice (2003). C. Barker Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice (2007). J. Hartley A Short History of Cultural Studies (2002). J. Lewis Cultural Studies: The Basics (2002). G. Turner British Cultural Studies (1996).