The Confluence Between Cultural and Communication Studies

The Confluence of Cultural and Communication Studies by Professor Toby Miller

Communications is a much bigger field than cultural studies. Each one is split, both by geography and discipline. I’ll explain how they differ across various sites, both intellectually and politically. Communication studies is divided between a tradition of textual analysis, specifically debate, rhetoric, hermeneutics, and forensics; versus an effects tradition, looking at violence, education, consumption, and citizenship. At its strongest, cultural studies borrows from these and other influences, through its use of political economy, textual analysis, and ethnography. Those approaches are themselves inflected with queer theory, feminism, postcolonial studies, and environmental work, inter alia. I favor an ambitious new program for cultural studies that can also influence communications. This will entail a turn beyond the centering of consciousness and towards materialist work focused on the environment and the labor process.

You can access the session’s slides here, kindly provided by Professor Toby Miller: CULTCOMM