This collection of essays explores the idea of the efficacy, limitations and future of Cultural Studies as a theoretical and methodological approach to the analysis of recent crisis phenomena in Europe. The volume spans a wide range of topics, including: theoretical and critical approaches to the stability of the EU as a political and economic union of its 28 member states; the (not only) recent flow of refugees into Europe and other countries, and the refugee tragedies off the coast of Lampedusa; the resurgence of far-right, anti-Islam political groups throughout Europe; the negotiation of affect and crisis phenomena in literary texts; and the question of media and refugees. These and other pressing issues are addressed and discussed from a variety of historical, political, pedagogical, gender, media and aesthetic perspectives, as encompassed in Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Literatures.

The aim of the volume is to arrive at a new working definition of Cultural Studies – making culture political again – in conjunction with Postcolonial and Gender Studies within a European context. Thus, the papers offer a fresh approach for a discussion of crisis phenomena in the context of complex encounters and conflicts, new regionalisms, emergency diasporas, gender studies, and neo-capitalism/neo-colonialism within a German-Italian framework and beyond.