Cultural studies has turned out to be, in retrospect, a weirdly thorough success that is influencing the creation and reception of culture everywhere in the world, especially outside the academy.

Christian cultural practice in the Iberian Peninsula belies a lingering paganism in the Peninsula well after we assume the total defeat of organized pagan religion: you just have to know where to look.

January was apparently Andrew Ross month over at Dissent.  Two articles, Jeffrey J. Williams's "How to be an Intellectual: The Cases of Richard Rorty and Andrew Ross" (in the Winter 2011 issue of the magazine) and Kevin Mattson's "Cult Stud Mugged" (an online original), track Ross's evolution from a so-called cult-stud into someone more akin to an academic labor reporter.