Introduction: Psychoanalysis in cultural studies – Positions, perspectives and proposals

Jürgen Kramer is Professor Emeritus of British Cultural Studies, Department of British and American Studies, Dortmund University. His main research areas have included the history of the British Isles and the British Empire, the sea as a cultural space, transatlantic slavery, the literature of the Pacific, cultural memory, anti-colonial resistance and the works of Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson. Among his publications are Cultural and Intercultural Studies (Peter Lang, 1990), British Cultural Studies (Fink, 1997), Britain and Ireland: A Concise History (Routledge, 2007) and Taking Stock (Narr, 2011). From 1994 to 2006 he co-edited the Journal for the Study of British Cultures.

Claus-Ulrich Viol is Senior Lecturer in British Cultural Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. His research interests include the study of pregnancy and birth, popular music and the James Bond phenomenon. He is author of Jukebooks: Contemporary British Fiction, Popular Music, and Cultural Value (Winter, 2005), co-author of Introduction to the Study of British Culture (Narr, 2007) and co-editor of Birth and Death in British Culture (Cambridge Scholars, 2012).