Battleground States

Stemming from an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Culture Club: The Cultural Studies Scholars' Association that included scholars from various disciplines and from around the world, this volume collects the work of graduate students and junior faculty which all examine the meaning of cultural scholarship in an ever-changing and increasingly global milieu. These voices, which often become marginalized and go unheard, represent what we see as the futures of interdisciplinary academic work in the humanities.The conference and this book are opportunities for scholars of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to come together and engage in a real dialogue with one another. Bringing disparate thoughts on politics, film, television, history, policy, and literature together counters the pressures pushing individuals to take political, religious, scholarly, and ideological sides. Through the efforts represented here, we gain a distanced, yet engaged, view on the many threads that bind us together and the forces that seek to separate us.Looking at this volume, the reader encounters many different approaches, from critical analysis of individual texts to autoethnography. The contributors and compilers of this book do not place these in separate sections or in any hierarchy but rather wish that all of these appear on an equally vital level that displays the ways in which each of the subjects and approaches might open up a piece of culture in a way that draws attention to the connections between them all.