Public Culture

Public Culture is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary academic journal of cultural studies, published three times a year by Duke University Press. It is sponsored by the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

A four-time CELJ award winner, Public Culture has been publishing definitive ethnographies, and analyses of cultural politics in globalization, for more than 25 years. The Public Culture journal provides a forum for discourse upon occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public eruptions, in everything from highly particular local events of popular/folk culture, to global advertising, consumerism, and information networks. International contributors include artists, crusaders, and scholars credentialed and neophyte, in all humanities and social sciences, combining for ideally lively, pioneering work in its pages.

The journal was established in 1988 by anthropologists Carol Breckenridge and Arjun Appadurai. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University Eric Klinenberg served as Public Culture's editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2015, during which time he initiated the online book review offshoot Public Books. From 2015 to 2019, Public Culture was edited by Shamus Khan, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Since 2020, the journal is edited by Arjun Appadurai and Erica Robles-Anderson, Professors of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

Public Culture received awards for Best New Journal in 1992 and Best Special Issue in 2000 from The Council of Editors of Learned Journals. In 2013, the same body named Public Culture co-winner of the Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement, recognizing the journal's revitalization and transformation with a "marked emphasis on accessibility and broader relevance." The journal has also been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement.