Jeff Hayton, associate professor of history, likes to study punks: the agents that
produce
social friction and disrupt normative values.
Jeff Hayton
鈥淭hose individuals and communities upset society,鈥� Hayton said. 鈥淎nd 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.鈥�
In 2022, Hayton published his first book, 鈥淐ulture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany,鈥� 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.
鈥淭he Western regime quickly learned to co-opt the punk scene and sell it back to the youth, which is how it largely exists today,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n the East, however, people were jailed or forcibly drafted into the army or shipped to the West just for singing. In a way, punk remained unassimilable in the East; it couldn鈥檛 be commodified and thus remained a source of subversion.鈥�
For his next project, he decided to study the history of mountain climbing by East
Germans, a rich tradition that is particularly fascinating considering the lack of
mountains
in the eastern part of Germany.
Back then, climbers didn鈥檛 quite fit into the image that socialist authorities wanted
for East
Germany either. Hayton said: 鈥淢ountain climbers are punks in their own right.鈥�
After spending a year in Germany on sabbatical collecting official government
memorandum, private correspondence and diary entries, he received a grant from the
German Academic Exchange Service of 10,000 euros, approximately $10,870, that enabled
him to return to Dresden to interview German climbers for first-hand accounts. Together,
these materials will create a holistic representation of the world of mountaineering
under a
communist government.
鈥淲hen we think about dictatorships, we think about their coerciveness and assume that
someone couldn鈥檛 possibly find fulfillment in such an environment,鈥� he said. 鈥淔rom
what
I鈥檓 finding, however, that鈥檚 not true. You have these tremendous cultural agents who
experience amazing adventures and feel nostalgic for their home.鈥�
He added, 鈥淓ast Germany, like much of the past, isn鈥檛 what we think it is.鈥�