Introduction: Working the Hyphens in Critical-Cultural Conversations

This volume addresses the ways and extent to which key concepts in critical and cultural studies remain useful to scholars, to policy makers, and to citizens—or the ways they need to be rethought and reconsidered if they are to continue to be viable. The essays, individually and taken as a whole, engage in debate about culture and communication and about cultural and critical studies. In responding to emerging political, social, and cultural problems, the field has changed over the years. Thus the meanings, significance, and interrelationships of its central concepts have changed, as the authors here show. Nonetheless, these