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How is MJAS different from a fan-site or fanzine?

We deliver primarily academic research-based content and we also provide resources for academics and teachers. We archive online content so that we can deliver researchers a referencing service. We are impartial and are not affiliated with any institution. Therefore we remain objective and balanced in our content. We provide content of a diversity which gives us perspectives of all kinds and makes very clear that we can study Michael Jackson from a wide variety of subject specialisms, from Popular Culture and Literature to African-American Heritage.

What Services Do You Provide?

We provide a very diverse range of content, including a monthly academic podcast, essays, opinion pieces, editorials, journal issues and volumes, resources, detailed academic book reviews, exclusive authorial interviews, a monthly column which updates readers on the world of Michael Jackson Studies, which is the only one of its kind. We also provide much-needed academic publications on Michael Jackson’s artistry.

Call for Papers

Michael Jackson remains one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century, yet his work has rarely been approached through sustained formal and art-historical analysis. Scholarship has tended to orbit biography, scandal, or cultural defence, leaving the work’s aesthetic intelligence under-examined.

This call invites contributions that approach Jackson form-first: as a unified aesthetic system integrating sound, image, movement, cinema, costume, and myth. We seek essays that situate Jackson within artistic lineages, classical, modern, diasporic, and global, and that examine how his work reshaped visual music, performance, and mass media.

Rather than adjudicating biography, contributors are encouraged to analyse how meaning is produced through form, structure, discipline, and reception history. Allegations, media controversy, and moral panic may be addressed only insofar as they function as reception frameworks, not explanatory foundations.

Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to):

  • Jackson’s short films as art objects and cinematic forms
  • The body as medium: choreography, discipline, and vulnerability
  • Black classicism and global visual culture
  • Sound, image synthesis and the grammar of visual music
  • Scandal as reception history and interpretive distortion
  • Lineage: Jackson in dialogue with classical, modern, and diasporic traditions

We welcome submissions from art history, visual culture, musicology, dance studies, film theory, and related fields. Contributions must be grounded in close formal analysis of Jackson’s work.

Academic Book Reviews

Here are some of the monographs, for which we would like detailed and thorough academic book reviews:

  1. Strong, Catherine and Barbara Lebrun, eds. Death and the Rock Star (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2016)
  2. Greenburg, Zack O’Malley, Michael Jackson, Inc.(Atria, 2014)
  3. Kirkland, Douglas, Michael Jackson: The Making of ‘Thriller’: 4 Days/1983 (Filipacchi, 2010)
  4. Petitjean, Isabelle, La culture pop au panthéon des Beaux-Arts: Dangerous, de Mark Ryden à Michael Jackson (Editions L’Harmattan, 2016)
  5. Smit, Christopher R. (ed.), Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle (Ashgate, 2012)
  6. Swedien, Bruce, In the Studio with Michael Jackson (Hal Leonard, 2009)

Academic Book Review Requirements:

  1. Formal language and third person perspective.
  2. Close textual detail of the book and its registration details.
  3. A chapter-by-chapter and section-by-section analysis of the book itself.
  4. Reviewer’s personal opinions on the academic value of the book.
  5. Clear and concise explanation of books that this book relates to, uses and can be used with.
  6. Clear and concise explanation of specific academic fields in which this book can be used.
  7. A model book review can be found here: http://michaeljacksonstudies.org/dangerous-by-dr-susan-fast/

Academic Essays/Articles/Opinion Pieces

We are also actively accepting submissions of academic essays, articles, and opinion pieces on a wide range of topics. Any author can submit for online publication, regardless of their previous experience. However, it is particularly helpful for our editorial team if your piece includes an abstract and a brief biography. Don’t worry if you’ve never been published before. We love to hear from new authors!

(c) Elizabeth Amisu

Submission contact details can be found here>>.
Please see: style-requirements and here are some journal submission topics to get you started:

  • Dance
  • Film
  • African-American Heritage
  • Musicology
  • Culture
  • History
  • Art History
  • Theatre
  • Literature
  • Michael Jackson as Composer
  • Michael Jackson as Persona
  • Michael Jackson as Auteur
  • Michael Jackson’s Legacy
  • Michael Jackson and the Creative Process
  • Michael Jackson and Fashion
  • (1968-1978) – Jackson 5/The Jacksons
  • Off The Wall (1979)
  • Thriller (1982)
  • Bad (1987)
  • Dangerous (1991)
  • HIStory (1995)
  • Blood on the Dance Floor (1997)
  • Invincible (2001)
  • Tours
  • Live Performance
  • Dance
  • Misappropriation/Contemporization
  • Moonwalk (Doubleday, 1988)
  • Dancing the Dream (Doubleday, 1992)
  • Earth Song
  • Academic Reviews on Michael Jackson-related publications

We read every piece that we receive and publish as many as we can. The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies endeavors to publish and support all authors and researchers who contact us. Professional editorial advice is available to all contributors who would like academic support.

No AI Indexing or Training

All content on this site/journal is protected intellectual property.
Use of text, images, or multimedia to train artificial intelligence, scrape, or extract data without explicit permission is strictly prohibited.
For inquiries or licensing, contact: [[email protected]]

Mission Statement

Michael Jackson Academic Studies (MJAS) is dedicated to the rigorous, interdisciplinary study of Michael Jackson’s work as a unified aesthetic system. Grounded in art history, visual culture, musicology, dance studies, early modern studies and film theory, MJAS approaches Jackson not as a biographical problem to be defended or debunked, but as a major late-20th-century artist whose work reshaped the relationship between sound, image, body, and mass media.

The journal foregrounds form, lineage, and reception history, situating Jackson within global artistic traditions, from classical European aesthetics and Black diasporic performance to postmodern visual culture. By refusing reductive moral binaries and sensationalist framings, MJAS provides a scholarly space in which Jackson’s art can be interpreted with the seriousness routinely afforded to canonical figures.

Our aim is not rehabilitation, but understanding: to examine how Jackson’s work functions, why it mattered, and what it reveals about race, embodiment, modernity, and the aesthetics of popular culture.

What is The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies?

An academic, scholarly journal, which is peer-reviewed, in which academic writing and scholarship relating to Michael Jackson can be accessed. Academic journals are one of the most wonderful ways to share academic criticism and research with interested parties. This research is presented as books, courses, events, essays, teaching resources, columns, articles, book reviews, academic podcasts and original research. In addition, we publish author interviews.

Why Michael Jackson?

It is a little-known fact that academic, well-researched “books on Elvis Presley alone outnumber titles on Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, andMichael Jackson combined”. (Vogel, Man in the Music). Whereas an artist like Michael Jackson is incredibly visible through the media and tabloid coverage, research on his art remains comparatively small. If this continues Michael Jackson’s contributions could be written out of history in just a few decades. Therefore, this journal nurtures, fosters, protects, preserves and grows the vital research and recognition of his work.

Who are the Editors?

The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies has three editors: Kerry Hennigan, Elizabeth Amisu and Karin Merx.

Where does your content come from?

Our content comes from academics and researchers around the world who wish to professionally publish their work. A list of all of our contributors can be found here.

Why do you have a Podcast

Podcasts are a fantastic way of getting academic ideas around Michael Jackson into the public sphere in a way that is easily accessible to listeners. Presented by the journal’s editors, it is the world’s first academic podcast which solely discusses the art of Michael Jackson as well as the broader contexts in which his music, performance and short films were created and received. Each podcast is filled to the brim with academic insights, a plethora of references from a range of academic disciplines, humor and a great deal of discussion, taking Michael Jackson’s work and the study of its reception to new heights.
MichaelJackson’s Dream Lives On: An Academic Conversation is our official, original monthly/fortnightly academic podcast which focuses on the life, art and creative work of Michael Jackson. Recently, featured on the iTunes ‘New and Noteworthy’ lists, Michael Jackson’s Dream Lives On: An Academic Conversation is the world’s foremost podcast on Michael Jackson in academic studies. It is available via iTunes, Android, Email, RSS, and Stitcher. Listen here.