Every month I post links to the most recent research into motorcycle culture, subcultures, clothing and identity, along with the biggest events in the motorcycling calendar. Here’s what caught my eye this month — a quieter run than January, with one substantial IJMS essay.
At the Boundary of Beauty and Truth: The Motorcycle as Aesthetic/Ontologic Vehicle
Steven Burr in IJMS Vol 22, published 27 February. Burr argues that motorcycling reconciles the subjective experience of beauty with the objective being of truth, working through Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, Heidegger and Pirsig. Less about subculture than about the phenomenology of riding, but a useful read if you’ve ever tried to put the experience into philosophical language and come up short. Pairs neatly with Helen Owton’s autoethnography work cited here in August.
https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume-22-2026/at-the-boundary-of-beauty-and-truth-the-motorcycle-as-aesthetic-ontologic-vehicle-steven-burr/
See also Helen Owton’s phenomenology of motorcycle maintenance in August 2025.
That’s it for this month. If you’ve come across research I’ve missed, feel free to email me.