Jeff Hayton, associate professor of history, likes to study punks: the agents that produce social friction and disrupt normative values.
“Those individuals and communities upset society,” Hayton said. “And in so doing, they speak to those societies and teach us. That disruption requires an enormous amount of energy and bravery, and that should be celebrated.”
In 2022, Hayton published his first book, “Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany,” which explored the emergent punk scenes on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Intersecting cultural production with political and economic theory, Hayton explains the differences in state reactions to the rise of punk.
