What Is Bad Subjects?

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A brief description of what the Bad Subjects project is.
"Surprisingly lively and smart."
Robert Rossney, in the San Francisco Chronicle
"[Bad Subjects is] the wired left."
Jack Kapica, in the Toronto Globe and Mail
"It revels in a self-consciously renegade spirit."
Liz McMillen, in The Chronicle of Higher Education
"A bridge between the academy and people working nine-to-five jobs"
Annenberg Online Journalism Review
"For those who would like to develop a more seductive and appealing language than neo-Marxist or post-structuralist jargon."
Elaine Showalter, Times Literary Supplement
"Some of the most straightforward, readable, and most importantly, relevant prose you're likely to find."
San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Four stars."
Magellan WWW Reviews

Bad Subjects is a collective that publishes a magazine (Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life) and provides access to it via a public-access website. In 1998, Bad Subjects founded a small educational nonprofit corporation, also called Bad Subjects, which promotes the progressive use of new media and print publications. Donations to the nonprofit go toward funding printed copies of the magazine Bad Subjects (distributed for free), and other related projects, such as Bad Subjects books. Bad Subjects seeks to revitalize progressive politics in retreat. We think too many people on the left have taken their convictions for granted. So we challenge progressive dogma by encouraging readers to think about the political dimension to all aspects of everyday life. We also seek to broaden the audience for leftist and progressive writing, through a commitment to accessibility and contemporary relevance.

Bad Subjects was founded in September 1992, at UC Berkeley. Since then it has circulated widely, and today we actually have about 250,000 readers from around the world per month. You can use our online facilities to find articles on any topic, or browse our current or recent issues.

Feel free to join in! We look forward to your participation.
Back Issues
Upcoming Issues

Bad Subjects Issue #85:
Is Kennedy Dead?

November 2013 will undoubtedly see much ink and pixel devoted to November 22nd, 1963, the day US President John F. Kennedy was shot. This issue of Bad Subjects: Political Education in Everyday Life examines not only the President and his times, but aspects both progressive and regressive of his enduring legacy.

The first black President (and his Mormon challenger) have been compared to the first Catholic one. JFK's assassination, and that of his brother Bobby, made the nation examine the easy availability of guns in the US. His brother Teddy regretted supporting Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation a decade ago, but Teddy survived long enough to cast his final Senate vote for the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). The impact of his contemporaries the late Dr. Martin Luther King and (surviving!) Fidel Castro remains, in our nation and world, worthy of re-evaluation. Do the United States' Afghanistan and Iraq wars in our time weirdly echo the errors and horrors of the Vietnam war in the 1960s? The culture of the time is reflected in TV's "Mad Men", in its sexual politics, personal vices and style. Contemporary fashion often references Kennedy's wife Jacqueline, and performers still look to his girlfriend actress Marilyn Monroe.

Contributors are invited to put on their Ivy League suits or pillbox hats, pour another martini, and sit at their typewriters to contemplate whether "Kennedy is the Remedy" (in the words of one campaign button), the enemy, an early Mitt Romney or America's frenemy, and how 2013 is or isn't like 1963.

Please send contributions to issue editors Ken Jolly and Mike Mosher by October 1, 2013.

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Collective Action
Collective ActionCollective Action, the second Bad Subjects anthology, is available today at your favorite local independent bookstore. (Get the first one, too.)
 
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