Welcome to Lateral's inaugural issue. Lateral is the publishing platform for the Cultural Studies Association (CSA). Our aims are to support, leverage, and organize the capacities of those affiliated with CSA to develop critical forms of publishing that are commensurate with innovative approaches to knowledge making, political intervention, and material forms of cultural expression. Lateral focuses on providing a place of experimentation in the range of material forms so that the knowing, feeling, sensibility we ascribe to the cultural can find an elastic and sustainable outlet for expression. In short, Lateral is interested in recasting both the form and content of what cultural studies can be.

The means for gathering, evaluating, and publishing work is called a research thread. Threads are edited and curated by individuals who solicit, commission, and guide the peer-review process and the evaluation of submissions. Lateral is not subject to the time and space parameters that attend to most sponsored or proprietary journal endeavors. Work can take months to reach a point where it is ready for publication or it can be published quickly in response to readiness or timeliness. Our publishing process affords both internal spaces where work can be developed and public domains that are freely accessible. The platform can also support a wide range of publishing forms and processes.

In this inaugural issue, Lateral takes the form of a cluster of four research threads. The initial threads converge around a consideration of knowledge formations, institutional and material location, and political intervention and implication. Rather than being organized topically or thematically, the threads provide various problematics, temperaments, tones, or dispositions toward developing work. The threads are in effect portals in which interests in identity, pedagogy, theory, violence, embodiment or other concerns that flow through cultural studies can be joined and engaged. New threads may be proposed to the curatorial board at any time.

The initial four threads are meant as an exploration of what is possible and an invitation for further work. Theory and Method, curated by Patricia Clough, treats various forms of knowing and being in cultural studies research. Creative Industries, curated by Jaafar Aksikas, invites composite methodological approaches to intersectoral flows inside and outside the university. Universities in Question, curated by Bruce Burgett and Randy Martin, decenters established claims for disciplinary, labor, and political economic legitimations for higher education. Mobilisations, Interventions, and Cultural Policy curated by Emma Dowling, pursues current transformational activisms to rethink values of polity, policy, and participation.

We welcome your responses to what you find here and proposals for future threads. In either case, contact the members of Lateral's curatorial board: