Cultural Studies – Inter-Multi-Trans-Pan-Anti-In-Disciplinary Studies

“Cultural Studies – Inter-Multi-Trans-Pan-Anti-In-Disciplinary Studies” is an edited academic book, which collects 20 chapters selected from the communications presented to the III Congress of RNEC – National Network in Cultural Studies, organized by the Center for Intercultural Studies (CEI) at ISCAP, Polytechnic of Porto, on the 11th and 12th of July 2024. The Congress brought together 75 participants of different nationalities, from 19 national and foreign institutions and research centers. The III RNEC Congress promoted the recognition of this community built around Cultural Studies and enhanced dialogues and collaborations on articulate and dense teaching and research, in the light of interdisciplinarity, in an affirmation of the constant irreverence, relevance and vitality of the area.

Thinking about and practicing Cultural Studies as an inter-, multi-, trans- and pan-disciplinary area does not mean following a vague and undefined path, in a random, arid anti-/in-discipline, alien to the contexts that condition contemporary academia. Quite the contrary, the Cultural Studies discussed in this volume challenge disciplinary boundaries that do nothing more than perpetuate power hierarchies and reproduce ideologically oriented discourses about the vulnerability of Social Sciences and Humanities. These anachronistic disciplinary boundaries contaminate Cultural Studies’ capacity for intellectual, political and social intervention. For this reason, the anti- and in-disciplinary intervention of Cultural Studies itself becomes an academic project oriented towards the defense of a contemporary and inclusive academy, aware of the changes required by decolonization, by feminisms, by all identities located somewhere in the inter-, multi-, trans- and pan-spectrum. In this sense, the Cultural Studies that we intend to discuss throughout this volume are inter-, multi-, trans- and pan-disciplinary in order to be anti-enclosed in the face of intellectual and in-disciplinary confinements in the face of hegemonic powers, honoring the legacy of Cultural Studies. Cultural Centers at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) Birmingham and Stuart Hall.