The Punk Reader

Intellect’s Global Punk Series (2019-present) has produced edited collections of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work into local, national, global, and trans-global punk scenes. Series editors, Russ Bestley, Mike Dines, Alastair “Gords” Gordon, and Paula Guerra discuss the inception, creation, and production of the series in this New Books Network Interview. In addition to the punk series, they discuss the Punk Scholars Network, additional books on punk coming out on the imprint, and DIY Academic publishing. Volumes 1 and 2 of the series are currently available and the next two titles will be out this fall. Scholars interested in participating in the series or learning more about the PSN can contact Dines (M.Dines@mdx.ac.uk) or Bestley (r.bestley@lcc.arts.ac.uk).  

The Punk Reader: Research Transmissions from the Local and the Global (2019) is the first edited volume to explore and critically interrogate punk culture in relation to contemporary, radicalized globalization. Documenting disparate international punk scenes, including Mexico, China, Malaysia and Iran.

Trans-Global Punk Scenes (2021) brings together contributors from a range of disciplines to examine the global influence of punk in the new millennium, with a focus on punk demographics, the evolution of subcultural punk styles, and the notion of punk identity across cultural and geographic boundaries. International in scope and analytical in perspective, the chapters offer insight into punk scenes in New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Ireland, South Africa, Mexico, the UK and US, Siberia and the Philippines.

Punk Identities, Punk Utopias: Global Punk and Media (December 2021). This new volume in the acclaimed Global Punk series extends the critical inquiry to reflect broader social, political, and technological concerns impacting punk scenes around the world, with international contributors, ranging through topics from digital technology and new media to gender, ethnicity, identity, and representation.

Punk! Las Américas Edition (December 2021). This book challenges the dominant vision of punk – particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism – by analyzing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of 'America', a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes and despairs of late twentieth and early twenty-first-century experience. Compiling academic essays and punk paraphernalia (interviews, zines, poetry, and visual segments) into a single volume, the book seeks to explore punk life through its multiple registers, through vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays, and underground literary expression.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.