Where They Teach You How to Be Thick

"Taken together, this work has amounted to an interrogation of punk’s essence—an attempt to figure out why this explosive and self-destructive-seeming movement has proven so persistent, and what it has meant to all the different people who have embraced it. According to Anne Cecil of Drexel University, who oversees punk programming at the annual meeting of the Pop Culture Association, the reason for the apparent surge of interest in punk among academics comes down to simple demographics. What’s happening, she said, is that people who participated in the scene as kids during the late ’70s and ’80s have reached a point in their careers where they can spend time studying what they’re really passionate about."

Leon Neyfakh in The Boston Globe reports on the emergence of Punk Studies.