The first annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference at George Mason University will interrogate the politics of cultural programming in public spaces. Institutions within the conference purview include: museums, festivals, the performing arts, sporting events, multicultural and/or ethnically specific celebrations, gigs and club nights, and tourist spectacles. Of special interest is the menu of activities available in specific localities at any given moment: Of what is this menu comprised? To whom is it offered? And at what cost? Questions to be considered may include but are not limited to: * How is the knowledge of cultural programming produced in and through institutions? * How does cultural programming produce knowledge? * How do cultural institutions interpellate performative identities of race, class, gender and sexuality? * How do we understand labor in the context of cultural events? * What are the ideological stakes of cultural programming, and what is its political economy? * What kind of subject and desire does cultural programming produce?