ABSTRACT
This book has already had a life of its own, a history of a decade. Back in the mid-1980s, as an alternative to formalist and positivist paradigms in the humanities and social sciences, British cultural studies, and Stuart Hall’s work in particular, began to make an impact across national borders, especially in the American academy. In 1985, Stuart Hall was invited, as Ida Beam Professor, to deliver a series of lectures on the University of Iowa campus. Intrigued by his ‘passion, intensity and intellectual generosity’, the Journal of Communication Inquiry, organized by graduate students of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, decided to devote a Special Issue of their journal to Stuart Hall, in recognition of his long-term contribution in opening up spaces for critical scholarship. That Special Issue was edited by Kuan-Hsing Chen, one of the editors of this collection. In preparing the project, it was clear that the task was not naively to celebrate the work of a committed intellectual but rather to take the opportunity to productively facilitate further ‘critical dialogues’.
