Dear Colleagues,

Over the last years, the relationship between Cultural Studies and Literature has developed into an interdisciplinary field of research, covering history, cultural memory, social sciences, philosophy, and linguistics, among others. In A. Erll’s view, literature not only reflects culture, synthetizing different traditions and “the interplay of present and past in socio-cultural contexts” (Erll, 2008), but also informs, in more ways than one, specific historical, social, religious, and collective frameworks of contemporaneity. In Aleida Assmann’s perspective, Cultural Studies and Literature are closely connected. She argues that literature has complemented, revised, criticized, transformed, opposed and subverted various historical, social and political identity constructs (Assmann, 2013). In turn, cultural studies is undoubtfully a very diverse and multilayered interdisciplinary field, concerned with sociology, historiography, philosophy, and literary criticism. Closely associated with the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, founded in 1964, contemporary cultural studies has spread transculturally, covering multifarious historical periods and operating within various countries, societies, and cultural domains.  

The main objective of this section is to develop new analytical and theoretical perspectives featuring conceptual interconnectedness of cultural studies and literature. Considering its interdisciplinary structure and a transcultural focus, the goal of this section is to publish original articles reviewing a broad spectrum of cultural and historical phenomena represented within literary historiography. “Literature and Cultural Studies” provides an opportunity for the constructive interaction among scholars from diverse disciplines interested in examining functional, reflexive, metaphorical, analogical, and theoretical relationships between cultural memory constructs and literary criticism.

It enables researchers from disciplines as varied as history, sociology, philosophy, literary studies, and cultural studies to engage in a stimulating dialogue, motivating original findings in this area of study.                

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Elena Bollinger 

Section Editor