ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the deep connections between British cultural studies and film studies, reminding us how central the teaching and analysis of popular film was to the formation of cultural studies. Of comparable importance to British cultural studies was the History Workshop at Oxford University, which advanced politically engaged forms of “people’s history,” amplifying the historical impact of women, workers, and colonial subjects. In the 1970s and 1980s, the events and publications of the History Workshop were a point of intersection between the new theoretical frames of cultural analysis and the traditions of radical history. Consequently, and generally underappreciated today, just as poststructuralist continental theory secured its purchase on film scholarship and cultural studies, new methods and materials of historical research were being explored and expanded to situate “popular arts,” including film, within cultural history.
