CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

WELCOME!

After the extremely successful Crossroads 2000 in Birmingham, UK, our plan was to continue the international tour of the Crossroads conference site. Unfortunately, we did not manage to get the next conference organized either in Amsterdam or elsewhere. Therefore, the next international biannual Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference will again take place in Tampere, Finland, where it first started in 1996. Let us therefore invite you to the Fourth International Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference! As before, the mission of the Crossroads conference is to provide an open forum for all topics that interest the diverse international cultural studies community; to make contacts, exchange views and gain inspiration from each other. We encourage international participation from different countries, disciplines and cultural backgrounds, and from a wide range of research areas. It is up to you to again make this a conference that will show where cultural studies is going next.

I hope to see you all in Tampere!

Yours sincerely,

Pertti Alasuutari
Chair of the organizing committee

THE ASSOCIATION FOR CULTURAL STUDIES?

For quite a while there have been discussions about the possibility of establishing an international association of cultural studies. The idea comes from Pertti Alasuutari who introduced it during the Crossroads 1998 conference. Informal discussions first between Alasuutari, Ann Gray, Larry Grossberg and Joke Hermes and later with a bigger group led into a "Draft Proposal for establishing an International Association of Cultural Studies at the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference in Birmingham", signed by Pertti Alasuutari, Ann Gray, John Hartley and Joke Hermes (in alphabetical order). A general lauch meeting arranged during the Birmingham 2000 meeting then elected a larger committee to prepare a constitution for the the association, now called the "Association for Cultural Studies" (ACS). These talks are still underway, but we will soon be able to publish the proposal for a constitution on this site.

The idea is that in the 2002 Tampere meeting there would be the official launch of the new association. The plan is that future Crossroads conferences would be the official biannual meetings of the association.