Punk Provocations: E Bernhard, S Morello, D Pearson, B Davidjants, and T Sonnichsen PMBiP 12/17/2025

Описание: This conversation is focused on punk as a culture of provocation—how punk scenes and bands build communities, make meaning, and leave behind archives that are as contested as they are influential. Authors talk about what it means to write punk history now: the ethics and aesthetics of “problematic” legacies, the politics of humor and offense, and the ways punk travels across languages, borders, and generations. Ellen Bernhard, Stefano Morello, and David Pearson share from their edited collection NOFX: Forty Years of “Problematic” Punk Provocations (Bloomsbury, 2025); Brigitta Davidjants shares from J.M.K.E.’s to the Cold Land (Bloomsbury); and Tyler Sonnichsen previews his book-in-progress, The Dead Milkmen (J-Card Press). Each speaker offers brief remarks, followed by conversation among the panelists and a Q&A with the audience.

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Ellen Bernhard is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgian Court University. Her research focuses on contemporary punk scenes and their relationship with influences such as popular culture and social media. She is also interested in the rhetoric of punk and the genre’s use of humor as a means to critique and satirize. She’s the author of Contemporary Punk Rock Communities: Scenes of Inclusion and Dedication (Lexington, 2019) and the co-editor of NOFX: Forty Years of “Problematic” Punk Provocations (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Stefano Morello brings digital and traditional methods to the study of cultural infrastructure and the transnational reverberations of American popular and unpopular culture. He holds a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center, where he currently works as Assistant Director for Digital Projects. He’s the curator of the East Bay Punk Digital Archive and the co-editor of NOFX: Forty Years of “Problematic” Punk Provocations (Bloomsbury, 2025).

David Pearson is a music historian, saxophonist, and composer. He holds a PhD in musicology from the City University of New York and teaches at Lehman College. He is the author of Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock in the 1990s United States (Oxford University Press, 2021) and the co-editor of NOFX: Forty Years of “Problematic” Punk Provocations (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Brigitta Davidjants (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, senior researcher) is a musicologist and writer. Formerly focused on Armenian national ideologies, she now studies how subcultural belonging intersects with identity politics and emotional well-being. Her recent work includes Changing Generational Dynamics Among Estonian Post-Punk Parents and Children (Punk & Post-Punk, 2025) and Identity and Mental Well-Being: A Case Study of the Estonian Vikerlased LGBTQ+ Mixed Choir (JEF, 2025).

Tyler Sonnichsen is the author of Capitals of Punk: Paris, DC, and Circulation in the Urban Underground (Palgrave, 2019) as well as The Dead Milkmen (forthcoming 2026, J-Card). His research focuses on Cultural Geography, Media Studies, and Urban History. He earned his PhD from the University of Tennessee in 2017, and he is Senior Lecturer at the University of Vermont, with dreams of becoming a full-blown professor. More can be found at SonicGeography.com.