Welcome to Major Threat

Call for Submissions for Major Threat: Punk Rock Academia (A Zine)

A Punk/Zine Movement (Re)Imagining Education

Call for Submissions:  Articles, Fiction, Poetry, Art, Commentary Reviews (Book, Film, Articles), or suggest something.

 Borrowing from George Orwell, academia--and more specifically teaching and learning--is in a bad way. While boasting to be a space of intellectualism and academic freedom in support of better education for all, higher education can too often be far from it. Deeply entangled with neoliberal regimes of capitalism, higher education--and the associated professoriate--is trapped in a recursive loop of recurring patterns of publishing, content, promotion and tenure rules, grant culture, and productivity over product seemingly less and less about community authenticity, rapport with diverse students in the classroom, and solidarity with activists on the front lines battling tyranny and injustice. But, how might that ever change when status and power is situated in a bastion of rules, traditions, hierarchies, and conformity. Furthermore, might such a change be necessary for not only identifying what’s not working in K-12 schools but also liberating education from the bastions of neoliberal nonsense underwriting a majority of the day-to-day work in our schools and communities. Responding to these conditions and a generative interest in the critical project of examining which understandings of K-12 and higher education should be kept and which ought to be abandoned?, this group of curriculum scholar-punks are introducing a Zine alternative to mainstream publishing we are calling “Major Threat.” The project emerges from the editorial teams experiences in diverse punk pedagogies, anarchist scholar-activism, and a genuine  devotion to a demand for local, situational, and at times anarchic resistance to dominant curriculum and pedagogy both in K-12 schools and in higher education.
 
We invite YOU, the scholar-activists, to actively resist the authority of neoliberal subjectivities undermining critical departures from dominant models of how to often teaching and learning is conceptualized within the enclosures of exclusive networks. We spend our time and spin our wheels publishing. We do research, write papers, write books, write grants, and expend great amounts of time and money. For what, if so little is changing in comparison with the massive increase of climate change, hyper-consumerism, and war? And increasingly it seems as though we publish and produce because that is the measure of who we are--or how we are evaluated by an increasingly authoritarian State. Additionally, many of our publications lack a direct connection to those most impacted by the content of our work or they are only about those impacted and often are indigestible and exclusionary. Why? For who? When so little radical academic work is reaching decision-makers we assert that we can do better, and ought to.
             
Please consider contributing shorter pieces (150-1000 words) to this alternative project and contact us at ([email protected]) with any questions about how you can be a part of “Major Threat.”  We are interested in diverse perspectives that stem from roots in resistance movements, critical theories, radical pedagogies, punk, hip hop, artist communities, and anarchist collectives. All publishing is political, this publishing aims to be for those on both sides of a paywall that continues to grow higher and higher as scholarship remains captive to neoliberal regimes. 
 
Deadlines for quarterly issues: Jan 1, April 1, July 1, Oct 1 emailed to [email protected] to connect with an editor who will work with you on your submission.
 
If you are interested in submitting to the pilot issue, please do so ASAP.
 
The Shit Talker,
Drew Kemp

 

The 'Zine

DIY

The purpose of this ‘zine is to create a space of freedom. A space without fear. A space for expression.  For too long, the system of higher education has been  living within its own Ivory Tower. Faculty write and conduct research, as required under this antiquated system, but has the K-12 school changed in any fundamental way? Can Johnny Read now?  Have the Savage Inequalities been corrected? Has Superman arrived? Hell no!

Political and Social Awareness

Be aware of society.  Of culture.  Of politics.  Of religion.  Of economics.  And take a stand. 

Don’t be a servant to the system.  Come up creative ways to disseminate your ideas.  Don’t use packaged goods as curriculum. 

Non-Conformity of Thought and Action

Doesn’t it seem like, as academics, we have a tendency to replicate what others do?  We add on to the existing?  We find our piece of the puzzle?  Fuck that.  Expand your thoughts.  Be new.  Be you.
 

YOU MUST LISTEN TO THESE BANDS FROM PIRATE PRESS RECORDS

“Will punk rock ever die?
Pal, if you have to ask it’s dead to you.”
–Henry Rollins

For more information, go to:
http://punkrockacademia.com/
[email protected]
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