The Contemporary Crisis and the Time for Cultural Studies: Interview with Lawrence Grossberg

ABSTRACT

In this interview, Lawrence Grossberg, an internationally renowned scholar of cultural studies, shares with us his ideas about the theories and practice of cultural studies and media studies, the organic crisis in the United States and the world in general, and the social, economic, and political problems that have troubled people’s minds in the United States. He also describes his thoughts on the development of cultural studies in non-Anglo American context and his impression of Chinese cultural studies after a short visit in China in 2015.

KEYWORDS:

• Lawrence Grossberg
• cultural studies
• interdisciplinarity
• crisis
• conjunctural thinking

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Lawrence Grossberg is Morris Davis Professor of Communication and Director of the University Program in Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His works include It’s a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics and Culture (1988), Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays in Popular Culture (1997), Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics and America’s Future (2005), Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (2010), We All Want to Change the World: The Paradox of the US Left (2014), and so on. He is editor of the journal Cultural Studies, which is the longest-running and most respected academic journal in its field.

Liu Zixu (following Chinese practice, the surname, Liu, is placed first) is an assistant researcher at the Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His research focuses on media studies, cultural studies, and political economy of communication.