HE Reading Groups

The resource below is a critical reflection on the Stuart Hall PGR Reading Group (2023-25), including a discussion of the formation of the reading group and its contexts, and a reading list which  can be used as a starting point for setting up similar programmes elsewhere.

 

Formulating the Stuart Hall PGR Reading Group

As Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) from 1969-1979 at the University of Birmingham, Stuart Hall set out to establish a radical, collaborative and democratic academic environment. This document is a record of the development of The Stuart Hall Reading Group inspired by CCCS’s legacy which ran from 2023-25. In our capacity as early career researchers working full-time on the Stuart Hall Archive Project, we sought to foster an interdisciplinary, PGR-focused reading group as a space for scholars across departments to engage intellectually with current global crises through Hall’s analysis of the late twentieth century. 

Conscious of how difficult it can be for researchers to find space and time for academic group discussion outside the context of outputs and assessments; we set up the Stuart Hall PGR Reading Group to foster PGR community on campus at the University of Birmingham. Once a month, we provided set texts authored by Stuart Hall and a room in which we could gather and think together. While the reading group was PGR-focused, regular members ranged from MA students to Professors, with some coming to every session over the two years, and others dropping in and out as time went on. The reading group format offered an opportunity to work through ideas slowly, attentively, and with an openness to open-ended questioning and contradiction that worked as a counterpoint to the increasingly neoliberal demands of higher education.

Because bridging institutional and disciplinary siloes was such a key part of the cultural studies project at Birmingham - and its legacy - it was important that this reading group was not only open to but actively sought out members from across colleges and disciplines. The reading group included members from geography, literature, religious studies, education, music, creative writing, history, and sociology, among others.

Focusing only on works authored by Stuart Hall, the readings were selected to coincide with current global and local events (elections, conflicts, etc), reflecting the political engagement of Hall and CCCS beyond the University. Not including secondary materials simplified and intensified working with Hall’s texts – about finding a singular voice, recognising his humour, understanding his political journey. This supported PGRs in the development of their own critical voice as scholars and to address the challenges inherent to negotiating identity in an academic environment whilst traversing personal and global crises.

From this experience, we conclude that a PGR reading group can usefully intervene in the present neoliberalist academy by making a sustainable space to read, talk, and listen together with colleagues. Although responses and engagement will differ based upon the institutional setting, individual leadership and uptake, the reading list below can serve as a template for setting up similar programmes. 

 

Year One, Term One

  • Hall, Stuart. 2023. “Professor Stuart Hall at the Inaugural Karl Marx Memorial Lecture, Sheffield, 1983.” Inaugural lecture, 1983. Posted 12 March 2023 by Sheffield City Archives. YouTube, 57:40. https://youtu.be/IP_OWahR-Gc?si=ur7dE7UE6tBweQXx
  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “The Great Moving Right Show.” In The Hard Road to Renewal. Verso. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “Introduction.” In The Hard Road to Renewal. Verso. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2012. “On ‘Policing The Crisis.’” Posted 9 July 2018 by UK Data Service ‘Pioneers of Social Research’. YouTube, 03:59. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ydvCdB_Uo
  • Hall, Stuart. 2013. “Thatcherism.” Posted 8 April 2013 by MEFblog. YouTube, 06:08. https://youtu.be/AMrMg96tc7g?si=UV-lQCfxGj3ChL6G
     

Year One, Term Two 

  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse.” In Writings on Media: History of the Present, edited by Charlotte Brunsdon. Duke University Press. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “A World at One with Itself.” In Writings on Media: History of the Present, edited by Charlotte Brunsdon. Duke University Press. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “Media Power: The Double Bind.” In Writings on Media: History of the Present, edited by Charlotte Brunsdon. Duke University Press. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2019. “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities [1991].” In Essential Essays, Vol. 2: Identity and Diaspora, edited by David Morley. Duke University Press. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2008. “Constituting an Archive.” Third Text 15 (54): 89-92.

[For our final session of the year, we visited the Stuart Hall Archive at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.]
 

Year Two, Term One

  • Hall, Stuart. 2024. “Prologue” and “Introduction”. In Selected Writings on Visual Arts and Culture: Detour to the Imaginary, edited by Gilane Tawadros. Duke University Press.
  • Hall, Stuart. 2019. “Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life [2007].” In Essential Essays, Vol. 2: Identity and Diaspora, edited by David Morley. Duke University Press.
  • Hall, Stuart. 2016. “Lecture 7: Domination and Hegemony.” In Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History, edited by Jennifer Daryl Slack and Lawrence Grossberg. Duke University Press. 
     

Year Two, Term Two

  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “The State - Socialism's Old Caretaker.” In The Hard Road to Renewal. Verso. . 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “The Great Moving Right Show.” In The Hard Road to Renewal. Verso. 
  • Hall, Stuart. 2021. “The Centrality of Culture: Note of the Cultural Revolutions of Our Time [1997].” In Selected Writings on Marxism, edited by Gregor McLennan. Duke University Press.

[For our final session of the year, we visited the Stuart Hall Archive at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.]

 

Note: this resource is based on our experience running the Stuart Hall PGR Reading Group at the University of Birmingham and engages with ideas that have been much-discussed in wider scholarship around higher education settings, including ‘slow academia’ (Walker, 2017; Bosanquet and Sturm, 2024), the neoliberal university (Gumport, 2000; Lorenz, 2012; Shore and Wright, 2017); working practices at the CCCS and its legacy of interdisciplinarity (Moran, 2010), and the formation of academic identity during postgraduate research (Tobbell et al., 2010).

 

-Rita Gayle (‘Conjunctures’ Researcher, SHAP) and Katherine Parsons ('Digital' Researcher, SHAP)