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Abstract
This concise editorial explores the current disciplinary gaps between geographical and humanities analyses of cultural production through consideration of a specific example. American comics artist Chris Ware's Building Stories, considered a masterpiece of comics art, has attracted attention from both humanists and geographers on account of its urban theme and its intriguing architectural form. This interest raises two sets of questions for a proper cultural studies analysis. First, to what degree are humanities scholars approaching the work without attending to geographical issues of space/place that inevitably figure into its architectural form? And second, to what degree are geographers approaching the work without addressing the humanities issues of artistry and representation that figure into its comics form? Surveying the criticism on this work may provide some initial answers to these questions and in the process speak to larger issues of interdisciplinary research in urban cultural studies.

Abstract
A major urban project begun on 4 April 1910, the Gran Vía is a street in central Madrid, Spain, constructed in three segments that connect Calle de Alcalá with the Plaza de España. Imagined on the heels of other urban reforms of the mid-to-late nineteenth century – chief among them the Puerta del Sol, which gained more recent international notoriety as the base of protests by the Indignados – the Gran Vía sought to establish Madrid as a modern European city and by extension testify to the urban modernity of the Spanish state. This famed thoroughfare has been represented in artistic products (theatre, novels, films and paintings) throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries as an enduring symbol of the Spanish capital's urban modernity. This short-form article explores the potential for social sciences and humanities approaches to combine in a site-focused, interdisciplinary approach to urban culture. At the same time, it also documents the potential of digital projects on cities to involve students and faculty in collaborative research within a new educational paradigm.

Abstract
This two-part editorial launching the first volume of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies (JUCS) details the need for and significance of an urban cultural studies (UCS) method, broadly conceived. Focusing on two specific areas of interdisciplinary study – the ever-shrinking gap between film studies and geography and the rise of spatial theory in literary studies, this installment of the editorial hopes to tease out the problems and potential that arise with discipline-crossing scholarship. Overall, UCS foments a dialogue between art and society – between textual/representational (humanities) understandings of culture and anthropological, geographical, sociological (social science) approaches. This is ideally accomplished within a reconfigured urban studies paradigm that continues to embrace its characteristic focus on architecture, built environment, city planning, everyday life, identity formation, landscape, space/place and transportation, while venturing further into artistic terrain than ever before – films, literature, music, sequential art, painting, digital humanities approaches and more.

Abstract

Abstract
This inaugural editorial launching the first volume of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies details, in two parts, the need for and significance of an urban cultural studies method, broadly conceived. Part 1 (in Issue 1) culls insights from the work of urban philosopher and cultural studies pioneer Henri Lefebvre (1901–91) as a way of exploring the role of philosophy in urban cultural studies research and examining its key terms: cities, the urban, interdisciplinarity and culture. Overall, urban cultural studies (UCS) foments a dialogue between art and society – between textual/representational (humanities) understandings of culture and anthropological, geographical, sociological (social science) approaches. This is ideally accomplished within a reconfigured urban studies paradigm that continues to embrace its characteristic focus on architecture, built environment, city planning, everyday life, identity formation, landscape, space/place, transportation and more, while venturing further into artistic terrain than ever before – films, literature, music, sequential art, painting, digital humanities approaches and more.

Abstract
This Editorial opens the special issue of the International Journal of Iberian Studies titled 'Reading Madrid: Perspectives from Urban Cultural Studies' by suggesting mobility as a trope that is just as relevant to close textual readings and to a wider understanding of Madrid's cultural production as it is to questions of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, more broadly considered. Appropriately, given the objective at hand, the impetus for this move is sparked by a textual analysis – of Madrid's presentation throughout the opening sequence from director Pedro Lazaga's 1965 film La ciudad no es para mí.

Disability Studies and Spanish Culture is the first book to apply the tenets of Disability Studies to the Spanish context. In particular, this work is an important corrective to existing cultural studies of disability in Spain that tend to largely ignore intellectual disabilities. Taking on the representation of Down syndrome, autism, alexia/agnosia as well as childhood disability, its chapters combine close readings of a number of Spanish cultural products (films, novels, the comic/graphic novel and the public exhibition) with a broader socio-cultural take on the state of disability in Spain. While researchers and students of cinema will be particularly interested in the book's detailed analyses of the formal aspects of the films, comics, and novels discussed, readers from backgrounds in history, political science and sociology will all be able to appreciate discussions of contemporary legislation, advocacy groups, cultural perceptions, models of social integration and more.