Cultural studies as a hidden discipline

• This article examines the issue of disciplinarity in cultural studies from the perspective of prospective students in the field. It argues that cultural studies as educational practice is a hidden discipline with little public profile outside the few universities where it is taught as a named subject area. The result of this lack of visibility is that cultural studies is in danger of becoming a discipline for insiders, for those already `in the know' and those who stumble across it. I argue that, in order to become politically engaged with disenfranchised groups, cultural studies must make more effort to be visible to those groups. Thus, paradoxically, for cultural studies to become more politically engaged as educational practice it must take on more of the trappings of institutional disciplinarity. •