Punk in Popular Culture: Noise, Style, Politics and Afterlives
Online
Organization: PopCRN - The Popular Culture Research Network
Punk has never stayed where it was put. Emerging from the economic, political and cultural upheavals of the 1970s, punk became music, style, attitude, subculture, political language and cultural mythology. From London, New York, Sydney, Belfast, Berlin, Tokyo and Jakarta, punk travelled rapidly while taking radically different local forms. It transformed music and fashion, challenged conventions of gender and sexuality, generated distinctive visual and material cultures, and provided a language through which alienation, anger, resistance and belonging could be expressed.
Yet punk has also become something it once appeared determined to resist: heritage, commodity and nostalgia. Torn clothing and safety pins entered high fashion. Punk records became collectors’ items. Posters and fanzines entered museums and archives. Bands once associated with underground scenes became canonical figures in popular music history. Punk aesthetics circulate through advertising, television, film and social media, while successive generations continue to rediscover, appropriate and reinvent punk.
The Popular Culture Research Network (PopCRN) invites proposals for an interdisciplinary conference exploring punk as a major formation in popular culture, from its historical emergence to its contemporary afterlives.
The conference asks what happens when punk moves beyond the scene and becomes popular culture. How has punk been represented, remembered, commercialised, institutionalised and reinvented? Who has been included in dominant histories of punk, and who has been marginalised? How do histories of punk change when examined through race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, age, place and nationality? Can punk retain oppositional force once its sounds, images and objects circulate through mainstream culture?
Papers might examine punk through music, film, television, fashion, photography, art, literature, comics, performance, celebrity, journalism, advertising, material culture, museums, archives, digital culture, fandom or everyday life.
Possible topics include:
Origins, scenes and histories: CBGB and New York punk; London and the Sex Pistols; The Clash and political punk; Ramones and the aesthetics of speed and simplicity; Patti Smith and punk poetics; Australian punk and bands such as The Saints and Radio Birdman; local scenes and regional histories; punk behind the Iron Curtain; punk outside Britain and the United States; post punk, hardcore, anarcho punk and other transformations of the form.
Race, class and politics: punk and working class identity; unemployment and economic decline; anti establishment politics; Rock Against Racism; punk and anti fascism; race and the whiteness of punk histories; Black punk; Indigenous punk; migration and diaspora; colonialism and postcolonial punk; nationalism and punk; policing, surveillance and censorship; punk as protest.
Gender, sexuality and the body: women in punk; Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith and other punk icons; queercore; punk masculinities; Riot Grrrl; sexuality and transgression; beauty, ugliness and bodily refusal; hair, tattoos, piercing and bodily modification; punk ageing and the changing punk body.
Fashion, style and material culture: Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren; bondage trousers, leather jackets, ripped clothing and safety pins; DIY fashion; hairstyles and cosmetics; punk typography and graphic design; album covers; badges and patches; record collecting; fanzines, flyers and posters; punk bedrooms, clubs and record shops; the movement of punk style from the street to the runway.
Sound, Performance and the Punk Aesthetic: noise, distortion, speed and brevity; amateurism and anti virtuosity; screaming and vocal performance; three chord aesthetics; live performance; pogoing and moshing; stage violence and confrontation; audience participation; punk humour, obscenity and provocation; the aesthetics of ugliness and deliberate failure.
Global Punk: punk in Aotearoa New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East; punk under authoritarian regimes; Indigenous punk; postcolonial punk; migration and diaspora; translation and localisation; how punk changes as it moves between cultures.
Punk on screen: Jubilee (1978); The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980); Sid and Nancy (1986); Dogs in Space (1986); The Decline of Western Civilization (1981); This Is England (2006); punk documentaries and biopics; fictional punks; punk television; punk soundtracks; punk as shorthand for danger, rebellion and social disorder.
Media, technology and DIY culture: independent labels; pirate and community radio; cassette culture; photocopying and the fanzine; punk photography; alternative publishing; bootlegs; punk journalism; online archives; social media; streaming and the digital rediscovery of punk; DIY culture before and after the internet.
Punk, commerce and contradiction: punk and the music industry; selling rebellion; punk in advertising; luxury fashion and punk aesthetics; celebrity punks; authenticity and accusations of selling out; punk merchandise; nostalgia markets; reunion tours; anniversaries and reissues; punk as brand.
Punk celebrity: Sid Vicious as punk celebrity; Debbie Harry and celebrity femininity; Johnny Rotten and the transformation of punk notoriety into media celebrity; punk autobiography; celebrity ageing; the punk icon as commodity.
Memory, heritage and afterlives: museums and exhibitions; archives and personal collections; punk heritage tourism; oral histories; documentaries and retrospectives; anniversaries; canon formation; forgotten punk histories; ageing punks; intergenerational fandom; the preservation of ephemeral culture; whose punk becomes history?
After punk: post punk, goth, hardcore, grunge, emo and alternative music; Riot Grrrl; punk's influence on fashion and visual culture; punk aesthetics in contemporary protest; new global punk scenes; TikTok and punk revivalism; Gen Z encounters with punk; the continuing circulation of DIY and anti establishment cultures.
Please submit abstracts (200 words) and author details via our online portal by 31 July 2027. Notification of abstract acceptance is 31 August 2027.
Registration is free. The conference is welcoming of early career researchers, postgraduates, Indigenous scholars, people with diverse identities, and industry experts or food practitioners.
Please send any queries to popcrn@une.edu.au
· Submit here - https://unesurveys.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8jjzaWnS732QsFE
· Register here - https://unesurveys.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7TGWUYZidtlxVLU
Lisa