Category Archives: Essay

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.