Hallmarks: The Cultural Politics and Public Pedagogies of Stuart Hall

This provocative, interdisciplinary, and transnational collection delves deeply into the educational and public intellectual hallmarks of Stuart M. Hall, a core figure in the development of the post-War British New Left, of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and later, of the Open University. It opens new vistas on both critical educational studies and cultural studies through interviews with, and essays by, leading writers, shedding light on the under-appreciated public pedagogical and cultural politics of the New Left, of Thatcherism, and of Rightist, neo-colonial, diasporic, and neo-liberal formations in Jamaica, the UK, Australia, North America, and Brazil.

Intimate and moving, the contributors describe Hall’s diasporic formation as a courageous ‘artist’ and educator of cultural politics and social movements, showing both the reach and the relevance of his public pedagogies in the construction of alternatives to essentialist racial politics and the despairing cynicism of neo-liberalism. With contributors and interviewees including Leslie G. Roman, Michael W. Apple, Avtar Brah, John Clarke, Annette Henry, Lawrence Grossberg, Luis Gandin, and Fazal Rizvi, Hallmarks: The Cultural Politics and Public Pedagogies of Stuart Hall reveals that neither cultural politics nor public pedagogies are stable or self-evident constructs. Each legitimates and requires the other as part of a longer radical democratic project for social justice. This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.