Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The key terms animating the fields of cultural studies and feminist studies in the Euro-American world have shifted dramatically since the 1970s. Inspired by Raymond William’s canonical work, I use keywords as a device to examine the changes that have occurred in two interdisciplinary fields of scholarly inquiry. Through four case studies – precarity, queer, empire, intersectionality – this presentation will document how the shifting vocabularies not only signal shifts in scholarly interests but also signal changes in the larger geopolitical economy. Informed by insights from the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies my study focuses on the cultural work conducted by these shifting keywords. In particular, without positing a deterministic logic, I seek to highlight the economic factors that may shape the new foci of feminist and cultural studies. I use these insights to build a cartographic project of knowledge produced by feminist scholars and cultural studies scholars in Europe and the US over the last five decades. Working with postcolonial and critical race theories, I also highlight who is left out of these practices, what social formations are erased and at what expense.