This term we (Nick Gaskill and Joe Moshenska) are organising a fortnightly reading group in which we will discuss the work of Stuart Hall, theorist of race, culture, and much else. Hall’s writings have been made newly accessible by the series of volumes of his essays published by Duke University Press (all currently available online via SOLO); this therefore seems a particularly apt moment to be engaging with his extraordinary body of work and its legacy. It seems all the more fitting to do so in Oxford, where Hall studied literature, an experience about which he writes in complex and fascinating ways in his memoir,Familiar Stranger. For the first three meetings we will read selections from his essays; for the fourth we will read a section from the anthropologist David Scott’s book Stuart Hall’s Voice. The group is open to undergraduate and graduate students, and teachers and researchers in all fields. We hope to see you at the meetings!

Monday January 23rd:

“Politics, Contingency, Strategy: Interview with David Scott”,Essential Essays,v. 2
“The Great Moving Right Show” (1979),Essential Essaysv. 1
“The problem of ideology: Marxism without guarantees” (1983),Selected Writings on Marxism