How did you become involved in the Punk Scholars Network? In 2015, I was in the U.K. (Oxford) to obtain my Certificate in Digital Musicology, which I wanted to employ in developing my Engaging Punk Project (EP). EP focuses on a number of interactive, interlocking pedagogical initiatives through which students engage punk as method, and I had seen the flyer for "Punk Now !!" the Second Annual PSN event held in Birmingham. Thinking this might be a good venue to theorize the democratization of digital musicology through engaging punk, I applied to the conference and was accepted. This PSN event was sandwiched in between conferences on the east coast in the U.S., so I stayed for around 24-36 hours, meaning that I tried to meet as many people in the most intense way possible, and they were super receptive and welcoming! PSN left an impression on me, and I became committed to working with the crew.
Why do you feel it's important that a network for those involved in the study of punk/punks exists? For persons, like me, who have (been) identified as "punk" and have come to the study of punk only in the process of it being a way of life, I think there are a number of difficulties, having to do with the representation of our various (sub)cultures, which can and have been presented as "novelty." Coming from differentially marginalized positions, punk scholars can help each other challenge, extend and expand the conventional systems that would seek, through their operational procedure, to eradicate us from the production of knowledge about punk or music or, in my case as well, anti-imperial perspectives through Marshallese music that addresses U.S. nuclear weapons testing. When it comes to the "study of punk," I think punk scholars need to be present to support non-punks who are invested for whatever reasons they are conduct and disseminate their research in ways that will not further stereotype or make vulnerable our punk communities and those political communities to which we belong that are also marginalized, ranging along the politicized lines of race/ethnicity, gender/sex/sexuality, (dis)ability, class, nationality/regionality, religion/spirituality, and so forth. Working together, we can also confront the longstanding disparities within the punk scene/punk communities as well and be more mindful of processual divestment from inequitable privileges.
Tell us a bit about your own (punk) research?
Engaging Punk Project (EP), from which an online course experience, including DIY/indie collaborative video game project, "Making a Scene"; first phase of development through Game Jolt has recently completed with winner announced (Cing-Jia for "Rocky Punky" from Taiwan). Ongoing.
Punkast Series (podcast series), first season in production with guest producer Tequila Mockingbird, founder of the Punk Museum (LA, NYC, London, Berlin), guests include all ranges of punx, including Glen Matlock (formerly of Sex Pistols), Vique Simba (Revolution Records), and various members of the PSN crew. If interested in talking all things punk and "the system," let me know (schwartz@humnet.ucla.edu).
Publications: Punk Pedagogy, decolonial methods. Working on edited collection, monograph, and articles on such issues, as well as collaborating with the UCLA Library Special Collections Punk Archive, "punk collective."
What is your connection to punk/background in punk? A way of life.
Jessica A. Schwartz is an associate professor of musicology at UCLA. Schwartz's first monograph Radiation Sounds: Marshallese Music and Nuclear Silences (Duke University Press, 2021) shares a punk methodology with two extant book projects, one about U.S. civil defense sound design and the other about punk as political pedagogy.