About Cultural Studies Now!

About Cultural Studies Now!

CULTURAL STUDIES NOW! is an independent website aimed at promoting, defending,
and perhaps criticizing cultural studies in all its various forms within Bali/Indonesia.
We do not study "high culture" or aesthetics in and of themselves and are not aimed at
preserving any particular culture. That field would be called "the study of culture."
Cultural studies looks at the politics within culture where meanings are created,
opposed, and maintained.

Since Raymond Williams coined the term in Birmingham in the 1960's, cultural
studies has colonized academia in unforeseen ways creating outposts in India,
Australia, USA, and other places which have in most instances thrown off the shackles
of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in bold attempts to define
themselves. Cultural studies in Bali is no different. While continuing to use the
language created in Birmingham (which was in many cases appropriated from older
critical traditions), "Kajian Budaya" in Bali has grown as we have explored our own
marginalities related in many cases to tourism, contrasting religious and social
identities, and particular postcolonial experiences.

The specific mean of NOW! in our name is meant to both distance ourselves from past
incarnations of cultural studies as well as express a call to action. We believe both the
discipline of cultural studies and individual work around the field itself can serve to
assist the un(der)represented and humanize the marginalized. Of course NOW! does
not close the door on other fields playing important roles in the future or even
cultural studies (in Bali) itself transforming in the future as it surely will.

Cultural Studies in Bali was founded in 1996 by the late Prof. Dr. I Gusti Ngurah Bagus
and friends from Udayana University, Bali. Initially, they were inspired by the
founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of
Birmingham, England in the 1960's and its subsequent migration to other areas of the
globe. Because cultural studies is characteristically critical, grounded, and
emancipatory, Cultural Studies at Udayana University itself has its own colors which
are different than other incarnations of cultural studies around the world.

This website is meant to assist students, alumni, and staff of the Master and Doctoral
Program of Cultural Studies within the Udayana University Postgraduate Program in
Denpasar, Bali but in no way should any content of CULTURAL STUDIES NOW! be
taken directly as speaking on behalf of or in any way representing the fine public
Indonesian institution which is Udayana University.