NEW ORLEANS – The Tulane Global Humanities Center (TGHC), housed within the Tulane University School of Liberal Arts, has been chosen as the new institutional home of Public Culture, one of the world’s most respected peer-reviewed journals in the humanities and social sciences.
Published by Duke University Press, Public Culture has shaped scholarly and public debate on the social and political impacts of globalization for more than 35 years. The journal has published some of the most influential work on transnational culture, media, urbanism, social movements, and the intersection of politics and public life. Effective July 1, the journal moved from New York University to TGHC.
This marks an important milestone for the Center, which was established in 2025 to connect scholars across disciplines around the defining questions of our time. It also recognizes Tulane’s growing role in shaping international conversations in the humanities and social sciences while drawing on the distinctive intellectual and cultural landscape of New Orleans. TGHC’s current examination of global port cities complements the journal’s longstanding focus on transnational flows of culture and people.
“It is a tremendous honor to welcome Public Culture to Tulane, where our commitment to interdisciplinary research at the intersection of the Gulf South and the Global South is our trademark,” said Brian T. Edwards, dean of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts. “I am confident that our editorial sponsorship of the journal will bring new energy to this always dynamic journal and that hosting it at Tulane will benefit our faculty and students.”
Beginning with its next editorial cycle, Edwards will serve as the journal’s co-editor alongside Vyjayanthi Rao, an urban anthropologist, curator of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and the journal’s co-editor since 2023. Public Culture will continue to be published by Duke University Press three times a year.
Since its founding in 1988, Public Culture has become one of the defining voices in transnational cultural studies, bringing together research that crosses geographic, intellectual and disciplinary boundaries. The journal has earned an international reputation for publishing work that challenges conventional thinking and helps shape conversations across the humanities and social sciences.
“Duke University Press is thrilled to partner with Tulane University as the new institutional home for Public Culture,” said Rob Dilworth, the journals director of Duke University Press. “We have great confidence in Tulane’s ability to steward the journal into its next chapter, especially given the Center's alignment with the journal's transnational focus. With the combined editorial leadership of Brian Edwards and Vyjayanthi Rao, we are excited to see how Public Culture will continue to challenge conventional thinking and shape global conversations in the humanities and social sciences.”
The journal was founded at the University of Pennsylvania by distinguished anthropologists Arjun Appadurai and the late Carol Breckenridge, whose editorial leadership helped establish Public Culture’s international reputation. It was long associated with the University of Chicago and most recently has been based at NYU.
At Tulane, Public Culture will create new opportunities for faculty collaboration, student engagement, visiting scholars and international dialogue. It will extend the Center's mission beyond convening conversations to shaping them through one of the field's leading scholarly publications.
“Public Culture was founded during a moment of opening and cultural exchange at the end of the Cold War,” explains Vyjayanthi Rao. “The journal’s relevance continues to grow as possibilities for open exchange become simultaneously more intense and more uncertain and the need for slower paced spaces for contemplation becomes critical. Public Culture will find a vibrant home at Tulane, where the institution’s dynamism and the changing environment of the region will provide a space to contemplate the constitution of publics amidst rapidly shifting conditions.”
To support Public Culture’s next phase, the journal is establishing a new Senior Editorial Board composed of Tulane faculty and distinguished scholars from institutions around the world including Oxford, Columbia, UC Berkeley, and Yale. Tulane faculty serving on the first cohort of the Senior Editorial Board include Kate Baldwin (English, Communication, and Gender & Sexuality Studies), Tupur Chatterjee (Communication and Asian Studies), Andrew McDowell (Anthropology and Asian Studies), and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (French & Italian). Several Tulane faculty will also be invited to join the Editorial Committee, a larger collective of scholars based around the world.
Tulane will launch two national searches for roles that will support the journal later this summer: a full-time Managing Editor who will run its day-to-day and publishing operations and an Editorial Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, who will support editorial functions and expand connections to the Global Humanities Center public programming.
About the Tulane Global Humanities Center
The Tulane Global Humanities Center advances interdisciplinary humanities research that connects local and global perspectives through collaborative scholarship, public programming and international partnerships. Housed within the Tulane University School of Liberal Arts, the Center brings together scholars, artists and public thinkers to examine the cultural forces shaping today’s interconnected world.
About Public Culture
Published by Duke University Press, Public Culture is one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary journals in the humanities and social sciences. Since 1988, it has published influential scholarship exploring culture, politics, media, globalization and public life, helping shape research and debate across disciplines around the world.