Cultural Studies' Affective Voices draws attention to the significance of individual writers' voices in maintaining commitment to scholarly life. Combining a focus on theories of 'affect' lately dominant in the humanities with a history of cultural studies as a discipline. Melissa Gregg argues that what has been missing in accounts of the field so far has been recognition of the way it generates care and concern for the subjects of its studies, enacting a project of empathy from within ' the Academy'. The book suggests that cultural studies' major achievement has been to question the conventions of traditional academic discourse, reworking some of its expectations and functions to keep step with current events. In doing so, cultural studies has widened the participants for scholarly debate, making the academic vocation a more attractive and likely prospect for different kinds of people. Sharing the perspective of a new generation of cultural studies writers keen to retain the political impulse of the field's origins, the author highlights the diverse modes of performance that accompany and assist contemporary scholarly practice. Her book provides a missing link between cultural studies' earliest political concerns with those of the present , while emphasising the ongoing importance of engaged, public intellectualism in conservative times.

Acknowledgements
Communicating Investment: Cultural Studies, Politics and Affect
Activating Empathy: Richard Hoggart, Ordinariness and the Persistence of 'Them' and 'Us'.
The Politics of Conjuncture: Stuart Hall, Articulation and the Commitment to Specificity
Fighting for the Future: Lawrence Grossberg, Messianic Zeal and the Challenge of Building a Legacy
Justice and Accountability: Andrew Ross, Intellectual Labour and the New Academic Activism
A Voice of Vigilance: Meaghan Morris, Anecdotal Critique and the Politics of Academic Speech
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

MELISSA GREGG is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies and Lecturer in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is author of a number of articles on cultural studies and contemporary politics.