Establishing a truly coherent history of cultural studies is nearly impossible. Accordingly, as Michael Green asserts, with a degree of plausibility, “Any narrative of the ‘development’ of cultural studies (particularly if it stresses founding ‘fathers’ or places) tends to be misleadingly overcoherent.”3 Still, we want to orient ourselves to some of the bolder strokes that have been taken over the previous two hundred years. Three overlapping phases in cultural studies may be discerned. The first