War on the Boulevard

Visualizing the Reagan-Bush Era: A curated selection from the archives.

This project investigates how punk flyers, zines, and underground publications from the Reagan and George H. W. Bush era functioned as a decentralized network of political communication, connecting geographically dispersed scenes while engaging with national issues such as militarism, policing, and state power. Drawing on archival research at Cornell University’s Rare and Manuscript Collections, it examines materials from multiple regional archives to show how punk communities interpreted broader political conditions through localized cultural practices and forms of dissent.

My honors thesis expands the digital collection on this website by interpreting the patterns revealed through metadata and mapping within their historical and political context. It develops the relationship between micro and macro politics, showing how everyday practices such as designing flyers, assembling zines, and distributing materials operated as localized responses to national conditions, while comparing regional archives from the Bay Area, Washington, DC, Texas, and the Midwest to highlight distinct interpretations of shared political tensions. It also integrates scholarship from subculture and media studies, drawing on theorists such as Dick Hebdige, Michel de Certeau, and Henry Jenkins to frame punk media as a participatory communication system outside mainstream institutions. Finally, it reflects on the archival and technical process behind building the collection, arguing that decisions about selection, metadata, and digital organization shape interpretation and position the digital archive as an extension of the analysis itself.