Punk & Pedagogy
Cart
☆ Find Your Stage
Dear Committee Members cover
LAUGH & RESIST

Dear Committee Members

by Julie Schumacher

A burnt-out professor and his recommendation letters.

For you if

you have ever worked somewhere that says it values people.

⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡

Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.

Buy New on Bookshop.org

Supports independent bookstores

— OR —

Find Used on Better World Books

Secondhand & sustainable

$16 MSRP · Paperback
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.

A tired English professor at a failing Midwestern college writes his letters of recommendation, and the novel is just the letters. They wander from the student he is recommending to the budget cuts, the department that has lost its funding, the dean who has lost his mind and the ex-lover who has lost his patience. It is an epistolary comedy about the university as a corporation, and the humane person stuck in it.

Where This Book Lives

Themes
communitycorporate greedinequalitysatire

Pass. Light, quick and funny, with real anger underneath. Punches up at administrators and the corporatized university and not at students. No documented author concerns. Close relatives: Bartleby, the Scrivener (suggested 10-22) and Lives on the Boundary; a good funny entry to the education shelf.

Related Viewing

Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Repo Man poster

Repo Man(1984)

dir. Alex Cox

Same themes: Corporate Greed, Inequality

Punk, aliens and the repo code in 1980s LA.

Otto, a Los Angeles punk with no job and no plans, gets taken on as a car repossessor by an older man who tells him 'the repo code'. They chase a Chevy Malibu with something glowing in the trunk. It is a sci-fi, punk, anti-Reagan comedy with a soundtrack by Iggy Pop, Black Flag and Circle Jerks, and its cult status is earned.

Why it’s here: The film is a punk movie that is also about work: Otto's choices are between a supermarket job and a life of taking things from people who can't pay. What's punk is the whole picture: the soundtrack, the generic-labeled cans and the contempt for consumer life. What's pedagogical is its satire of Reaganism and the Cold War. Pairs with Please Kill Me, England's Dreaming and Our Band Could Be Your Life. Note: it is crude, has plenty of 1980s-style violence and casual slurs by characters; older teens and up.

Where to watch: Rent $3.99 on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango At Home; buy from $4.99; no subscription or free option found (JustWatch US, updated 2026-10-26). Verify.Letterboxd ↗

Roger & Me poster

Roger & Me(1989)

dir. Michael Moore

Same themes: Community, Corporate Greed

Flint, GM, and a man who will not answer the door.

When General Motors closes its plants in Flint, Michigan, and lays off thirty thousand people, a local named Michael Moore tries to get the chairman, Roger Smith, to come and see what he did. He never gets in the door. What he does find is a town of evictions, rabbit-sellers and a sheriff who is evicting the people he grew up with. It is the film that made the documentary a popular form.

Why it’s here: The film shows what a plant closing does to a town, a family and a Christmas, in a way a chart cannot. What's punk is the fact that it starts with a nobody with a camera knocking on a door he is not allowed through. What's pedagogical is the way it is a lesson in point of view: Moore has been criticized for compressing the timeline, so the film is also a good case study in documentary honesty. Pairs with American Factory, Nickel and Dimed and Stupid White Men (suggested 10-25). Note: Moore is partisan, and the film's chronology is rearranged for effect.

Where to watch: Rent/buy only: Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft Store, YouTube, Fandango At Home per PicklePlus and unSUB; no subscription or free option found. Verify.Letterboxd ↗