The basement show in the ivory tower…
In the thirty years since Dick Hebdige published Subculture: The Meaning of Style, the seemingly antithetical worlds of punk rock and academia have converged in some rather interesting, if not peculiar, ways. A once marginal subculture documented in homemade ‘zines and three chord songs has become fodder for dozens of scholarly articles, books, PhD dissertations, and conversations amongst well-mannered conference panelists. At the same time, the academic ranks have been increasingly infiltrated by professors and graduate students whose educations began not in the classroom, but in the lyric sheets of 7” records and the cramped confines of all-ages shows.
Punkademics explores these varied intersections by giving voice to some of the people who arguably best understand the odd bedfellows of punk and academia. In addition to being one of the first edited collections of scholarly work on punk, it is a timely book that features original essays, interviews, and select reprints from notable writers, musicians, visual artists, and emerging talents who actively cut & paste the boundaries between punk culture, politics, and higher education. Contributors include Milo J. Aukerman, Maria Elena Buszek, Zack Furness, Alastair Gordon, Ross Haenfler, Curry Malott, Dylan A.T. Miner, Ryan Moore, Tavia Nyong’o, Mimi Thi Nguyen, Alan O’Connor, Waleed Rashidi, Helen L. Reddington, Stevphen Shukaitis, Michael Siciliano, Rubén Ortiz-Torres, Estrella Torrez, Daniel S. Traber, and Brian Tucker.
