Presenter Abstracts & Bios
Panel 1
Emo and Place - 11AM-12:30PM - Music Classroom Building 102
Chair: Varun Chandrasekhar
Global Aspirations and Local Persistence: Czech Emo and PostHardcore Scenes during the late 1990s and early 2000 - Ondřej Daniel - (11AM-11:30AM)
This paper investigates the Czech Republic’s emo and post-hardcore scenes during the late 1990s and early 2000s—a formative period when post-socialist cultural opening intersected with the first generation of fans and musicians to experience a truly globalized music culture. Emerging from a vibrant DIY ecosystem, these scenes were shaped by infrastructures such as Day After Records, the iconic Prague venue Strahov 007, and the activist ethos of Fluff Fest, which together enabled Czech actors to participate in transnational punk networks while negotiating local authenticity.
The study focuses on two contrasting strategies that crystallized within this semi-peripheral context. The first, exemplified by Sunshine, pursued rapid global integration through stylistic hybridization and mainstream adjacency, culminating in high-profile opportunities such as contributing to the soundtrack for Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000). This trajectory reflects an aspirational push toward the cultural “core,” leveraging touring circuits and media visibility but ultimately encountering the structural fragility of semi-peripheral ascent—burnout, stylistic dilution, and eventual dissipation. The second strategy, embodied by Lvmen, embraced slow, artisanal production and scene anchoring: releasing records approximately every five years, cultivating a distinctive aesthetic, and sustaining presence through local infrastructures. This approach privileged depth over reach, continuity over acceleration, and remains viable into the present, illustrating how DIY ethics can underpin long-term resilience.
How did Czech emo and post-hardcore scenes negotiate global cultural flows and local authenticity, and what do their strategies reveal about the semi-peripheral position of post-socialist music cultures within transnational punk networks? To answer this, the study employs a mixed-methods design: archival research (zines, flyers, label catalogs), semi-structured interviews with musicians and promoters, and discourse analysis of media and online forums. The analysis is framed by cultural sociology and world-systems theory, particularly the concept of semi-peripherality in punk and hardcore scenes (Daniel & Karamoutsiou, 2025), which illuminates how structural positioning generates hybrid strategies—oscillating between cosmopolitan aspiration and artisanal persistence. By situating Czech emo within global genre debates—on authenticity, commercialization, and identity politics—the paper contributes a non-U.S. perspective to a growing body of literature (Williams 2007; Peters 2010; Fathallah 2020; Mack 2021; DiPiero 2023). It argues that semi- peripheral actors are not passive recipients of global trends but active negotiators, crafting strategies that respond to both infrastructural constraints and cultural ideals. In doing so, the Czech case challenges linear narratives of globalization and offers a nuanced account of how DIY cultures endure amid shifting economies of visibility. Ultimately, this study foregrounds the interplay between local infrastructures, global circuits, and the ethics of scene-making, inviting broader reflection on the politics of cultural production in post-socialist Europe.
Bio:
Ondřej Daniel is a cultural historian specializing in popular and alternative music studies, with a focus on punk, hardcore, and DIY cultures in post-socialist Europe. He earned his Ph.D. in Contemporary Cultural History in 2012 from Charles University, Prague, in cooperation with Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier. Ondřej is a core member of the Czech Science Foundation project Negotiating the Revolt in Czech and Slovak Postsocialist Transition (2024–2027) and previously led Brave New World: Youth, Music and Class in Czech Post-socialism (2020–2022). He co-organized Negotiating the Revolt: Punk in Times of Political Transformation (Prague, 2025), serves on the executive board of the Czech and Slovak Archive of Subcultures, and is on the steering committee of the Punk Scholars Network. His publications include Violence against “New Biedermeier” (in Czech, 2016), Through the Ears of the Middle Class (in Czech, 2023), and the co-edited volume Music and Antifascism (Routledge, 2026).
“What’s Midwest about Midwest Emo?” - Marc Blanc - (11:30AM-12PM)
Bands associated with both the second-wave emo movement of the 1990s and the fourth-wave emo revival of the 2010s are often labeled as “Midwest emo.” This label applies even to groups with no roots in the Midwestern United States, including Washington’s Sunny Day Real Estate, Texas’s Mineral, Florida’s You Blew It!, and Philadelphia's Modern Baseball, to name just a few. While Midwestern music scenes in Urbana-Champaign, IL, and Lawrence, KS have undoubtedly been important incubators for independent emo, the region’s hallowed position in the genre’s name occludes several loci of underground emo across the United States and the world. How and why did so many bands, regardless of geographic origin, come to be known as “Midwest emo?”
Currently, the consensus answer to this question is that “Midwest emo” identifies a sonic style, a subgenre within a subgenre, characterized by twinkling guitars, intricate time signatures, a yelping vocal style, and earnest, introspective lyrics. Despite a degree of accuracy in this answer, I contend that the stylistic variation among artists even within this niche subgenre demands a more capacious explanation. My presentation argues that Midwest emo refers primarily to a means of production common to the bands under the Midwest emo label. Specifically, Midwest emo has come to signify an underground, independent method of music-making and circulating that connects these bands to the declining economic histories of not only postindustrial Midwestern cities like St. Louis and Detroit, but also economically struggling areas around the globe. My reading offers a way of politicizing and socializing a genre that is often taken as apolitical and self-involved, and it poses the questions: What does the emergence of the term Midwest emo teach us about the uses of regionalism? Can a region, in this case the Midwest, be at once fluid and specific?
Bio:
Marc Blanc is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Xavier University. His research and teaching focus on cultural production in the Midwest, with a particular interest in the connection between Midwestern regionalism and radical, internationalist politics. His writing has appeared in peer-reviewed and public-facing venues such as College Literature, Teaching the Rust Belt, and Jacobin. Blanc is the former drummer of the silliest little emo cover band in St. Louis.
Headin’ East on the Freeway: Dis/continuities in Rilo Kiley’s Encounter with Omaha’s Booming Music Scene - Michele Yamamoto (12PM-12:30PM)
The indie rock band Rilo Kiley formed in southern California in the late ‘90s, which imbued their earliest work with west coast sensibilities. Their sound represented a melancholy hopefulness that mirrored the southland, and the groups’ two leads, Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett, were both deeply connected to Hollywood as former child actors. The artwork for their 1999 self-titled EP—later released as The Initial Friend EP—was even a play on the cover of John Fante’s book Dreams From Bunker Hill, which was part of a series following the fictional writer Arturo Bandini making his way in Los Angeles during the Depression.
Their first full-length came out of Seattle’s Barsuk Records, but their second release, The Execution of All Things (2002) brought them to Omaha’s Saddle Creek Records, and it was this encounter with the Omaha sound proved a transformational moment in the band’s sound and lore. In addition to the album itself, they produced singles that reflected the influence of midwest emo bands like Cursive. At the end of their time with Saddle Creek, the band had shifted, splintered, and carved a new lane for themselves that no longer felt distinctly homegrown.
In this paper, I will examine the acoustic assemblage of Rilo Kiley’s embrace of the Omaha sound and Omaha emo more broadly between 2001 and 2004, when the band made their major label debut on their own imprint, Brute/Beaute. This will include a review of b-sides, compilation-only tracks, solo albums from band members, collaborations, and their 2013 release RKives, which pulled together unreleased tracks prior to their pause around 2008. I will also analyze interviews, reviews, and other memorabilia to help round out the assemblage and showcase this as a rich encounter between the midwest emo scene and a west coast indie band on the cusp of success as a way of demonstrating the depth of one’s impact on the other with windows into human geography, sound and place, and musical communities at the turn of the century.
Bio:
Born and raised in Southern California, Michele Yamamoto is a PhD candidate in Musicology at UCLA. Her recent work has focused on the listening practices and world building of the American far-right, and her dissertation will interrogate the encoding of human-ness in sound towards a more equitable listening praxis for humans, robots, and more. Ultimately, she is interested in arts justice and the way music and sounds enter and evolve within marginalized communities. Outside of her scholarship, she spent almost a decade working as an administrator with non-profit and educational organizations in Los Angeles and New York. She is currently a producer for Charles Barkley’s Round Mound Media. She holds an MA in musicology from CSU Long Beach (2022) and a BA in Music History from UCLA (2009).
Panel 2
Emo Ethnographies and Pedagogies - 11AM-12:30PM - Music Classroom Building 103
Chair: Philip White
Using Emo to Explore Masculinity in the Classroom: Approaches and Lessons Learned - Ian Zapcic (11AM-11:30AM)
In 2025, the author created a course titled History and Impact of Emo Music, which ran for the first time in Fall 2025. Intended as more than merely a music appreciation or education course, this course also focused on the various historical, technological, and social changes which led to the development and evolution of emo music as well as its closely associated genres. Likewise, the course paid particular attention to the psychological, sociological, and human development topics which are commonly observed in youth-associated cultures more broadly, but which have had particular importance in the emo scene specifically.
One of the sociological topics covered in this course was the concept of masculinity. Within the emo scene and its various generations or ‘waves’, masculinity has been integrated and performed in a range of ways. Indeed, the “Revolution Summer” era of the Washington D.C. hardcore scene—itself the proving ground for what would become known as the first wave of emo—came about through an intentional rejection of stereotypical, aggressive masculinity by bands and staff members associated with Dischord Records (most notably Amy Pickering). Likewise, during the height of the commercially-successful ‘third-wave’ of emo in the early 2000’s, there became a focused interest on the gender dynamics within the scene as most bands were comprised entirely or almost-entirely of young men while huge portions of their fanbases were young women. Emo, then, cannot be discussed without attending to masculinity.
This presentation seeks to inform listeners of ways that emo can be used to educate on topics of masculinity. The author will describe course content which was used to facilitate these topics, drawing from course readings and in-class materials. Specifically, this presentation will focus on the primary class discussions of masculinity and gender-based inequities in the scene. Importantly, the author will demonstrate how these topics were structured in such a way that students could evaluate the ways that emo and its associated scene rejected stereotypical masculinity in some ways while embracing it in others. Listeners will also learn about the development and implementation of class discussions about sexual violence within the scene, particularly related to allegations of grooming or predatory behaviors between bands and fans. The presentation will inform how these discussions supported a written assignment called “Separating the Art from the Artist”, whereby students had to form and express their opinions on whether they believe it is appropriate to continue listening to or supporting musicians who have been accused of sexual impropriety against fans.
Finally, this presentation will discuss lessons learned from this whole process. The author will reflect on the relative strengths and drawbacks of the approaches utilized, as well as the generally receipt of these topics from the students. The author will mention the things that surprised him, and the things that he intends to do differently in the future. In doing so, the presentation will offer insights for other instructors considering teaching similar topics related to masculinity and emo music.
Bio:
Ian Zapcic, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Social Work at Stockton University in Atlantic City, New Jersey. His research interests include the role and affordances of internet-mediated technologies in the development of cultural and personal identity sub-groups, particularly as they relate to gender and violence. In 2025, he created and taught an undergraduate General Studies course titled “History and Impact of Emo Music.”
Fabulous Killjoys: Queerness and Mental Health - Apollo Johnson (11:30AM-12PM)
This paper describes the role that third-wave emo has played in the lives of adults who grew up in the 2000s. Drawing on data from semi-formal interviews and field work, this study analyzes why listeners are drawn to the genre as well as how listeners use it to enhance parts of their lives. Interviews and field work were completed over the course of two years, within the USA and England. Most of the online field work was conducted on Tumblr, where dozens of posts were collected and analyzed.
The findings show that emo's third wave was particularly useful for queer listeners, as well as those with mental health struggles. Most respondents had both of these qualities, and indicated that third-wave emo helped them in ways that therapists were unable to. However, the public perception of third-wave emo is somewhat negative, and the genre is sometimes blamed for causing suicides and general depression. The irony of this is not lost on listeners who consider the genre life-saving, and many respondents cited this as one of the reasons for agreeing to be interviewed. Respondents told stories of their mental health journeys, often containing self-harm or suicide attempts. Each one stressed how the genre's depictions of mental health, as well as the publicly-known mental health struggles of band members, were a key part of their recovery.
For queer listeners in particular, third-wave emo culture often encourages "queer misreadings" of lyrics. This is especially true on social media sites like Tumblr. "Misreadings" are when listeners reinterpret the meaning of lyrics to be something completely different. For example, the line "duct tape scars on my honey" from My Chemical Romance's song "Destroya" is often "misred" as a reference to the scars that transmasculine individuals get if they bind their chests with duct tape (this was before binders were more mainstream). These queer misreadings are sometimes picked up by the artist as well, which only strengthens the bond that queer listeners have to the genre and artists. For other queer listeners, they use emo to help define their personal identity. For example, some called Frank Iero their "transgender awakening," while others said that the "stage gay" of early Panic! at the Disco was the first time they had experienced queerness being shown in a positive light.
These are just a few examples of how third-wave emo has impacted the lives of listeners. By drawing on the experiences of respondents, as well as field work, this paper aims to understand the role that emo plays in listeners' lives, and also aims to change the general perception of emo from negative to positive.
Bio:
Like many others, Apollo's interest in emo started at age 13, when he discovered LimeWire. Since then, he's been engaging with emo constantly. Going to shows, watching videos online, consuming and creating fanworks, and so on. For the last few years, Apollo has been working on his anthropology MS thesis at Illinois State University, which delves into the culture of third-wave emo. During his thesis research, he received two awards from the Image of Research competition; 3rd place in 2024, and 1st place in 2025. In 2024, he presented at ISU's Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies symposium. In 2025, he presented other research at the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs. He's also a member of the Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society. Aside from various music-related hobbies, Apollo engages himself with baking, making cosplay, and playing with his new dog Lola Bear.
“This sounds like something my Dad listens to!” Exploring Cultural Transmission of Emo Music - Philip White (12PM-12:30PM)
The Eagles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Fleetwood Mac all enjoy dedicated cultural institutions that sustain and transmit their knowledge. From Classic Rock radio stations to t-shirts at Target, these bands are culturally “known.” Will emo music and all of its related genres enjoy the same? Is it antithetical to expect such treatment? Through phenomenological and anecdotal reflection of my experiences as an educator in the midwest; the perceptions and contact points with emo music among young people can begin to unpack how emo music might be transmitted to future generations. At a time when emo music is being commodified in experiences such as the “When We Were Young” festival it is important to not solely focus on those who grew up as fans of the genre(s) but to utilize a maxim in studies of education - “Ask the kids.” Compared to past generations of music, this genre enjoys a level of cultural preservation via technology that for students to be unaware should raise questions of how we wish for emo music to be codified into our culture. These vignettes demonstrate the start of a knowledge base that should be expanded on. Gen Z & Gen Alpha are experiencing rapidly changing forms of cultural transmission - emo music might be the perfect vehicle for understanding nuances. While few students were dedicated fans - the majority of understanding was in the Pop-Punk sub-genere with glaring omissions of “mainstream” bands such as Blink 182 and only a general, “I think I’ve heard this before.” With technology and access to material no longer a barrier, why then has knowledge of emo music been reduced to memes (see: Evanescence, 2003; Linkin Park, 2003) among young people? Has emo music retained niche interest despite unlimited access to knowledge? Or have algorithms not just collapsed and obscured large swaths of culture - but completely erased them from memory?
Bio:
Philip “Pete” White, Ph.D. – Dr. White is not a music scholar, just an emo kid grown up. He is, however, a former educator and now educational researcher interested in students’ experiences in school – specifically related to the processes and policies which exclude and punish students at disproportionate rates. Additionally, his interests include teachers’ role in the reproduction of harmful practices and how we can work in research-practice partnerships to disrupt and build a just educational system. Currently, Dr. White’s postdoctoral work at the University of Missouri – St. Louis involves how to create research-practice-partnerships focused on how schools measure, evaluate, and adjust their Social-Emotional Learning programs at schools. Having such access to schools allows for intersecting research topics and insight into what the youth are “up to” today.
Panel 3
Emo and Gatekeeping - 11AM-12:30PM - Tietjens 4
Chair: Janessa Williams
“A Little Chicken Noodle Soup for the Emo Soul": When We Were Young, Nostalgia, and Emo Authenticity -Charlotte Hanrahan (11AM-11:30AM)
In recent years, emo and emo-adjacent aesthetics have seen a resurgence and led to the proliferation of nostalgia-ripe commodities like emo prom, Emo Nite, merchandise reading “elder emo” or “not just a phase,” and entire music festivals. These objects have proven to be intriguing interventions into and continuations of the debates surrounding authenticity and credibility that have raged in the emo and scene subcultures since the 2000s. This discourse began with heated debate regarding how to define emo as a genre and subculture—in other words, what counts as emo—and evolved to more heavily focus on who counts as emo. In this piece, I trace how over time, the highly aestheticized, visually distinctive, pop punk-dominated image of emo that proliferates in magazines and on social media has become ubiquitous. I argue that the “emo kids” of the 2000s, who were previously derided and excluded from both mainstream and punk spaces, have become the new owners of subcultural capital in alternative spaces.
With this in mind, I analyze When We Were Young Festival’s contributions to the scenes’ nostalgia and authenticity discourses through (auto)ethnography and discourse analysis. Drawing on my experience as an attendee at the 2024 iteration of the festival, I examine how nostalgia is produced and portrayed in When We Were Young’s hypermediated marketing and physical atmosphere as well as in the commentary made by members of the emo and scene subcultures at the festival. I argue that historically and in contemporary emo spaces, nostalgia and the gatekeeping it often produces function both as a way to amass subcultural capital and as a form of protection against real or perceived punishment of emos for their deviation from social, gendered, and political norms.
Through an interplay of aesthetics, marketing, subcultural knowledge, and personal affect surrounding emo, attendees at both the festival and its Cobra Starship, 3OH!3, and Millionaires sideshow situated themselves in relation to longstanding discourses about gatekeeping, culture vultures, and more. These rhetorical interventions often explicitly addressed the gender(ed) dynamics of the emo space. At the festival, women and femmes, who have often been gatekept out of subcultures and disproportionately expected to prove their subcultural knowledge, replicated gatekeeping discourses as a way of warding off unwanted advances from men and finding community. These young femmes rely on discourses of authenticity as a mode of self-preservation, filtering out men whom they believe are merely using subcultural aesthetics as sexual capital. This particular use of authenticity discourse is new, but it fits into a long history of emo and emo-adjacent subcultures being analyzed and lived in as queer spaces or as sites in which to interrogate gender norms.
Bio:
Charlotte Helena Hanrahan (she/her) is a PhD student and instructor of composition and LGBTQ+ studies at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her research interests include 1930s cinema, digital surveillance, representations of transfemininity in media, media historiography, and Brazilian cinema. Her recent work has explored the ways in which predictive and generative AI are mobilized against trans* and gender non-conforming people, the role of transfemininity in The Wizard of Oz, and the use of historical and historiographical discourse within the online hate campaign known as Christory. As Charlotte’s middle name suggests, she is an avid fan of My Chemical Romance and enjoys exploring the nuances of emo and other music-based subcultures in her personal life and academic work. Outside of academia, she is a metalhead, a hyperpop connoisseur, a hiker, and the proud companion of two rambunctious cats named Mitzi and Lolly.
Old Faves and New Fame: Emo Influencers, Inequalities, and Music Podcasts - Jenessa Williams and Francesca Sobande (11:30AM-12PM)
Emo, as its enthusiasts will proudly insist, was always more than a singular phase. In the last 40 years, the genre (and associated writing and scholarship) has endured as a space where emo is celebrated and critiqued in ways that powerfully address its politics, history, and potential future (Abdurraqib 2017; Fathallah 2020; Markarian 2019; Payne 2023). But amidst a 20-year marketable trend cycle and the collectivised feelings of isolation, nostalgia and introspection that Covid-era global lockdowns exacerbated, a ‘mass return’ to emo has been particularly palpable in the 2020s. This coalesced not just with difficult conversations about emo’s (un)inclusive reputation in the face of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, but also the rise of alternative media and influencer cultures, with first-person podcasts becoming one clear way through which to convey feelings of DIY authenticity, intimacy and personal truth.
In response to this climate of renewed interest in what we might affectionately term ‘mainstreamo’ (i.e. the more commercial end of emo’s third wave aesthetic and sound), key questions emerged for us as to how emo interacts with a mass audience, who is positioned as ‘expert’ in this strange counterbalance between nostalgia and present day, how is emo is being (re)defined now, and who is able to benefit from the visibility of being perceived as a key commentator or authority in this space.
To explore these questions, we focus on the case study of ‘Everything Is Emo’, a ten-part BBC series hosted by Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams. Shaped by key work that addresses tensions between notions of “alternative” music/subcultures (Hill 2016), “selling out” (Klein 2020; Ozzi, 2021) and our own previous consideration of the pitfalls of rose-tinted representations of emo (Williams and Sobande 2025), we argue that the podcast becomes one way for Hayley Williams to storytell the less favourable aspects of emo history, whilst tracing the idea of ‘emotional’, accessible music-making back to its DIY origins. We analyse a range of production and presentational choices, including which artists/guest stars are included, how Williams negotiates a balance between ‘new wave’ scene disturber vs experiential ‘elder emo’ authority, and the way in which emo’s typifying sonic characteristics, social politics and cultural legacy are contextualised, challenged or expanded upon. By focusing on a podcast produced within the UK but presented by an American artist, we also consider how regional, national, and international dynamics are implicated in emo’s cultural memory, in addition to the impact of intersecting inequalities (e.g., racism, sexism, colourism, misogyny, ageism). Our analysis allows us to explore multi-faceted dimensions of who and what emo – and indeed, an influential figure within the scene — is or can be.
Bios:
Dr. Jenessa Williams is a British writer, reader and chronic doomscroller, usually found in the North of England but currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow of Communication at Stanford University (2024-26). Her academic research explores race, gender, social justice and feminist representation in popular music, intersecting with the study of online fan communities and internet cultures. Her thesis-turned-forthcoming-monograph is an investigation of audience reactions to #MeToo-era allegations of misconduct made against hip-hop and alt-rock/emo musicians. Jenessa also works as a music journalist, writing for the likes of The Guardian, NME, The Forty-Five, Pitchfork and Alternative Press.
Dr. Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader / associate professor in digital media studies at Cardiff University (Wales/Cymru). She writes and makes art about webs of thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Her books include The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Consuming Crisis (SAGE, 2022), and Big Brands Are Watching You (University of California Press, 2024). Francesca is also co-author of Look, Don’t Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel (404 Ink, 2025) and Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2022), as well as the free and self-published graphic novel, Black Oo Here: Dreams O Us (2023). Her most recent writing includes the free self-published zine, Black Life in / and "Alt" Music Subcultures (2025), in addition to essays on “Echoes: Soft Space and Solidarity in the Legacy of Hardcore Punk” (Folding Rock),“She Burns: The Heat of Black Women in Blues and Punk” (Shuddhashar) and “The Inhale and Exhale of Art” (Shuddhashar). Francesca is currently working on a self-published comic, Balsamic Night, and an illustrated poetry collection, Haar.
Dissection of The 21st Century “Poser”: A Comparative Analysis of Aesthetic Identity and Subcultural Identity in Contemporary, Digital-age Emo - Sarita A. Deleon-Garza (12PM-12:30PM)
With the rise of aestheticism via internet algorithms, the power of subculture as a response to the ails of clean-cut society has become sidelined by fast-fashion. Without any prior knowledge of where subcultures come from, be it emo, punk, goth, or any other alternative culture, the ability to buy into an image without understanding its speculative origin is spoon-fed to anyone with a smartphone and access to social media. Without ever having to be a fan of the music or ideology that once was foundational to a scene (or so the old-heads would have you believe), anyone with an eye for ripped jeans or leather can simply purchase their rebellion from a warehouse built upon the exploitation of impoverished sweatshop workers (i.e. Shein). As the focus of this paper, it is crucial to understand where the emo subculture comes from and in response to what social deficiencies, just as it is crucial to understand how that origin fosters community–digital or otherwise– in our current decade. Under an increasingly global wave of digitally enhanced capitalism and consumer culture, I ask how authentic a genre based identity can be under such conditions while keeping in mind the societal circumstances that create a subculture, and the music that inspires its inception. To inform my understanding of subcultures from a sociological lens, Michael Brake’s Comparative youth culture: The sociology of youth cultures and youth subcultures in America, Britain, and Canada will serve as a linguistic guide for proper, academic analysis. To address the issue of fast-fashion identity aesthetics within the scene, Zygmunt Bauman’s, Consuming Life will serve to contextualize consumer culture and consumer identity as we understand it in the 21st century as experienced through social media. The purpose of this investigation is not to dismiss the modern emo subculture as inherently disingenuous, but rather, to find a way to integrate past and present by attempting to understand how the shift toward aesthetic emo may be detrimental to anti-capitalist identities which I speculate are crucial to the overall, long-term health and survival of subcultures as we understood them in decades prior to the 2000s.
Bio:
Sarita A. Deleon-Garza is a cultural studies scholar at Texas A&M University-Kingsville researching digital trends and contemporary pop culture from a feminist, neo-marxist lens. Their current project and master’s thesis, Tumblr and Girlhood: Tracing the Subversion of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” Through Fashion Blogging is a deep dive into identity aesthetics and the contemporary by-products of late stage capitalism as they exist on social media, specifically in fashion blogging spaces. Outside of their personal projects, they are also a research assistant focused on classic American literature into the 21st century for Stephanie Peebles Tavera (Author of P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship) currently focused on transcription work for a project entitled, The Plays of Angelina Weld Grimké edited by K.Allison Hammer and Stephanie Peebles Tavera. (Sarita is also an aging 5th wave kid who grew up with unmonitored access to the internet and remembers the day the “Real Emo” copypasta was posted on Reddit.)
Panel 4
Musical Analyses of Emo - 11AM-12:30PM - Blewett Hall Conference Room
Chair: Lauren Sheppard
Teaching the Church Modes through Original Math-Rock / Midwest Emo Inspired Compositions - Evan LeBouef (11AM-11:30AM)
This project presents a collection of seven original compositions in a Math-Rock and Midwest Emo style, designed as pedagogical tools for teaching church modes in both secondary and collegiate music theory classrooms. While traditional theory curricula often rely heavily on examples drawn from Western art music, and modern popular music theory may draw from top 40 hits of multiple decades, this project aims to broaden the musical landscape available to students by incorporating genres that are modern, underrepresented, and culturally relevant to many young musicians. Math-Rock and Midwest emo are idioms known for their intricate rhythmic structures, modal harmonic language, and expressive melodic writing that provides fertile ground for exploring modal theory in a way that feels immediately engaging and authentic to contemporary listening practices. Each of the seven pieces is composed to foreground a specific mode or modal relationship, making the theoretical material audible through characteristic gestures of the genres: asymmetric and shifting meters, arpeggiated guitar textures, open voicings, emotional melodic contours, while remaining diatonic for the students to be able to study. The works cover all seven church modes but can be scaffold across multiple lessons or weeks depending on the teacher's preference of coverage. Accompanying analytical notes, motif lead sheets, and guided listening prompts support teachers in connecting theoretical concepts to compositional practice, while performance-ready tracks encourage students to play along, improvise, or use the pieces as models for their own writing. By integrating these genres into the classroom, the project not only diversifies the repertoire used to teach fundamental theoretical concepts but also validates and centers the musical identities that many students already inhabit. The compositions invite learners to hear modes not as abstract theoretical constructs but as vibrant sonic colors that shape the emotional and stylistic character of modern guitar-based music. Ultimately, this project argues for a more inclusive and stylistically expansive approach to music theory pedagogy and to encourage others to do the same and to move away from traditional listenings in the theory classroom and to incorporate modern subgenres of today's actively listening youth.
Bio:
Evan LeBouef is a composer, jazz musician, and educator based in Nebraska, known for his innovative approach to blending genres and making complex music accessible. Evan's diverse musical journey has led him to arrange and compose for a variety of ensembles, from big bands to folk-rock groups. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts in Jazz Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he also collaborates with faculty to explore the fusion of jazz with other musical forms.
Evan’s projects include three albums in the works: a protest music collection, a large ensemble album, and a folk-rock band project. His compositions focus on texture and phrasing as melodic devices, bringing new life to familiar melodies and offering listeners a fresh take on songs that might otherwise be overlooked. As an educator, Evan specializes in teaching educators how to help students learn rhythm section instruments, an area often unfamiliar to public school teachers. He believes that music of all levels can be used to teach fundamentals, making challenging works accessible and enjoyable for students of all abilities.
Through his work, Evan aims to inspire both musicians and listeners by breaking down genre boundaries and making complex music engaging for everyone.
Texture, Energetics, and the Bait-and-Switch Prechorus in Pop-Punk - Lilly Korkontzelos (11:30AM-12:00PM)
In “Teleology in Verse-Prechorus-Chorus Form, 1965-2020” (2022), Drew Nobile puts forth the concept of the “telos principle,” wherein the functions of initiation, buildup, and arrival are each taken up by a song’s verse, prechorus, and chorus, respectively. In this presentation, I build upon Nobile’s work by exploring how prechoruses that do not exhibit typical buildup characteristics may still create and release tension to move a song into its chorus. In doing so, I propose a new prototype accounting for common prechorus construction in pop-punk: the bait-and-switch prechorus. I begin by defining the aspects of a bait-and-switch prechorus and outline its central features: a textural drop and a subsequent change in melodic grouping structure between the verse and the chorus. I adapt Yonatin Malin’s (2008) metaphor of energy to describe how these textural drops create tension that subsequently releases onto the rhythmic domain to fulfil a song’s teleological goals. Finally, I use three case studies to exemplify how this formal section and its characteristic energetics are employed in pop-punk specifically: “Check Yes Juliet” by We the Kings (2008), “America’s Suitehearts” by Fall Out Boy (2008), and “Swing, Swing” by the All-American Rejects (2002).
Bio:
Lilly Korkontzelos is a second-year master’s student in music theory at Michigan State University. Originally from Toronto, Ontario, she earned her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Windsor in jazz vocal performance in 2020. Lilly spent the years during and proceeding her undergraduate degree performing, teaching, and working as a producer and audio engineer at several local studios. These experiences have directly impacted her research interests and methodologies. Currently, Lilly’s primary focus is audio production and engineering techniques and how they may affect perceptions of narrative and identity. Her other research interests include music cognition, timbre and texture, and neotonality. In her free time, Lilly enjoys reading, going to art galleries, playing video games, and gushing over her cat (pictures available upon request).
Alternate Guitar Tunings in Fretboard Space - Tyler Howie and Matt Chiu (12PM-12:30PM)
In specific emo subgenres, “twinkling” riffs performed in alternate tunings serve as defining stylistic markers. This paper investigates the physical, gestural, and aesthetic affordances of these tunings, moving beyond historical context to analyze the “work” of performance. By building a dataset of emo riffs, we compare original, alternate-tuning transcriptions—such as those using the FACGCE open-major-ninth tuning—against versions in standard tuning, showing how alternate tunings facilitate open-string playing and specific topographical movements. We categorize these tunings by sonority and texture, highlighting how they differ from the fourths-based structure of standard tuning.
The physical affordances of alternate tunings interact with emo’s aesthetics, providing musical and stylistic affordances. Situating twinkling riffs in the context of emo’s history, we engage with the riffs as not just gestures but also features of style and signifiers of genre. Twinkling riffs are associated with “Midwest emo,” a label which has taken on different musical and generic associations throughout emo’s history, and they rose to prominence when the emo’s aesthetics were being (re)evaluated as part of the genre’s so-called “revival.”
Bios:
Matt Chiu is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Baldwin Wallace University. He researches computational models of music, specializing in probabilistic models, artificial intelligence, and the Fourier transform. He is the reviews editor for the Journal of Mathematics and Music, and his work has been published in Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, Music and Science, and more. Matt is excited to continue his work here at EmoCon with Tyler Howie—Tyler introduced Matt to emo (a burden he must bear), and together they have authored four papers on emo and genre. He is also a professional organist and hopes one day to achieve amateur status. His favorite emo band is Perspective, A Lovely Hand to Hold.
Tyler Howie is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Oberlin College and Conservatory. His research interests involve making connections between music theory and genre theory, and he received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2024 for his dissertation, “Framing Musical Schemas and Topics: Genre and Style in American Emo.” His work on Midwest emo is published as a co-authored (with Matt Chiu), two-part episode for the Society for Music Theory’s podcast, SMT-Pod, and he has a forthcoming publication on generic crossover between emo and math rock appearing in Music Theory Online. He has presented research on emo, pop punk, and math rock at conferences including the Society for American Music, the International Association for the Study for Popular Music, and the Punk Scholars Network. His favorite emo band is South Jersey’s own, By Surprise.
Panel 5
Emo and the Communal “I” - 1:30PM-3PM - Music Classroom Building 102
Chair: Alex Valin
“There’s No ‘I’ in Team: Agency and Individualism over Three Decades of Emo Music.” - Zac Djamoos (1:30PM-2PM)
Emo music is typically understood as self-obsessed, a genre that prioritizes the personal over the collective or the political, but such a view is reductive. Through a reading of the genre’s seminal albums, I hope to explore how the lyrical focus of emo bands has shifted from a focus on solely individual to more collective concerns. Broadly speaking, I posit that as emo became a genre in itself in the 1990s, the prime mover was I ; as it commercialized in the 2000s, songs turned on you ; and during the 2010s, the vaunted emo revival, artists focused more on we . In other words, the genre began with a focus on the narrator who had a particular feeling, shifted to center around the person or people who caused those feelings, and now primarily focuses less so on personal feelings and more so on broader collectively-felt moments. For the purposes of this study, analysis would begin in 1994 (the codification of emo as distinct from hardcore on Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary ) and end in 2014 (The Hotelier’s Home, Like No place Is There , which I argue is the natural endpoint of such an evolution). I examine three representative albums from each decade to analyze incidence of first-person singular, second-person, and first-person plural pronouns as well as broader lyrical trends to demonstrate the shift that emo music writ large made since the genre’s inception, a shift away from a hyper-focus on the individual and toward an embrace of the communitarian.
Bio:
Zachary Djamoos is a teacher of English at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in central New Jersey. He is an editor at The Alternative and has written for Stereogum, AbsolutePunk, Treble, and other sites. His coverage primarily focuses on emo and indie rock artists.
Aesthetically Emo(tional): Analyzing the Lyrical Aesthetics of Emotional Hardcore - Edward Stewart (2PM-2:30PM)
Emotional hardcore is undoubtedly a challenging genre to summarize concisely. Whether it’s due to mainstream misidentification in the early 2000s, or rather a lack of “proper” emo representation in modern music analysis, emotional hardcore has become a mixed bag of mystery. Although emotional hardcore, particularly the early waves, presents vast genre traits tracing back to its origins in the mid-1980s, academics have provided a clear and objective set of its aesthetic qualities in some key genre-defining community-based characteristics. Aesthetics, which includes ideals, musical direction, common themes, and cultural identifiers that most artists subscribe to, have been found in the clothing (Kelley and Simon 2007), gender performance (Ryalls 2013, de Boise 2014), and fandom interactions (Fathallah 2020) in current emo academic research; all of which point towards a clear community being created through common ideals. Although identity found through physical expression and means of communication is important, there has been a lack of research that only focuses upon the lyric content of these songs, which could provide a clear and accessible set of aesthetics that would allow for a better understanding of this genre. More specifically, explicitly examining how the aesthetics appear, transform, and are demonstrated through lyrics across the first three waves can allow for a better understanding of the genre at its core. Analyzing lyrical content is essential, as it was the initial wave’s lyrical aesthetics and contents that sparked “The Revolution of ’86″, leading to the creation/identification of the emotional hardcore genre.
Departing from the aesthetics and ideals of the hardcore-punk genre, the lyrics can be pointed to as a major reason for the establishment of the emo genre. To analyze the evolution of emotional hardcore punk, starting with the first wave (19851990), followed by the second wave (1990–1998) and ending with the third wave (1998–2008), Jesse Prinz’s work “The Aesthetics of Punk” (2014) serves as a useful guide. Each wave refines the emo aesthetic, with all acts from that wave taken into account. The task involves selecting notable artists and tracks from each wave, categorized into three aesthetics based on lyrics. To ensure thorough representation, both major and minor acts, as well as early and late tracks, are included. This ensures that the aesthetic is represented across the entire genre, not just in a few cases. Furthermore, we use lyrics that appear in tracks across the wave to identify a consistent influence and continuity, rather than a single instance created by a major act. Repetition of artists, especially in the first wave, is not uncommon, given the low number of recorded or recognized early acts at that time. The third wave is quite diverse, with many subgenres emerging in the early 2000s for a variety of reasons. The selection focuses on acts that span across these subgenres, taking into account the chimeric presentation of emotional hardcore. From the lyrical content presented across each track, the aesthetics of the first three waves will come forwards.
Bio:
Edward Stewart (they/them) is an interdisciplinary PhD student out of the University of Ottawa, specializing in musicology and gender studies. Their research focuses on popular music, primarily, but not limited to, the emo genre, along with analysis of gender, sexuality, and culture demonstrated through lyrical content. Following their master’s project, “Hardcore Heartache: Gendered Subjectivities and Perspectives in Third Wave Emo,” they have continued to present at several Canadian conferences, with the works “The Glass Closet: Emo’s Difficult History with Gender,” “Persona and Instrumental Characters: Analysis of Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter,” and their future project “Lovely Lyrics: Relationality, Lyric Choice, and Romanticism.” Alongside their passion for emo and alternative music, they work as a music director for one of Saskatchewan’s leading musical theatre companies, Sterling Productions.
“The Foundations of Decay: My Chemical Romance, 9/11, and Screaming on the Radio” - Alex Valin (2:30PM-3PM)
Fans of My Chemical Romance will eagerly rehearse the lore of the band’s beginnings on September 11, 2001: Vocalist Gerard Way took the ferry from New Jersey to Manhattan where he worked as an intern at Cartoon Network and witnessed the planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He would go home and write “Skylines and Turnstiles”: the first My Chemical Romance song. In this paper, I argue that examining My Chemical Romance and other bands associated with popular emo help us to understand the affective and political resonances of post-9/11 American music. As a scholar who left childhood and entered adolescence during this time period, this project was originally compelled by defamiliarizing the music that I encountered on the radio and music television at this time; when exactly did pop bands start screaming on the radio? To answer this question, I read the rise of popular emo music alongside the work of scholars working at the intersection of affect, culture, and performance such as Lauren Berlant, Brian Massumi, and Jose Esteban Munoz. I explore the following questions: How does popular emo express the atmosphere of anxiety and suspicion that developed after 9/11? Do the music and aesthetics of popular emo disturb the demand for strict forms of masculinity cultivated by the military-entertainment complex of the 2000s? What can the continuing popularity of these emo bands tell us about the connections between nostalgia, American culture, and imperialism? I focus on My Chemical Romance in this paper for several reasons. The first is because of their intimate connection to 9/11 and how this event has been cemented in fan imaginings of the band.
Secondly, My Chemical Romance is an interesting case study in the debate of what “real” emo is. Given the band’s massive popularity and Gothic fashion throughout the 2000s, they are readily identified with this particular form of emo, despite vehemently denying the label. In this period, we see “emo” entirely removed from its original DIY contexts to become a marketing term for major labels, and a term used by right-wing news media to incite moral panic over teenage depression, drug abuse, and deviation from normative gender expression. Ultimately, this paper shows that popular emo, exemplified by My Chemical Romance, demonstrates a particular affective relationship to post-9/11 politics. I end by examining My Chemical Romance’s reunion which began in 2020. The revival of the band in the final year of the first Trump presidency signals how the band’s music responds to a new era of political repression within the U.S. I discuss attending their September 11, 2022 performance in Brooklyn, NY, a show which began with their two songs that directly reference the twin towers: the only post-reunion original song they have released, “The Foundations of Decay,” and “Skylines and Turnstiles.”
Bio:
Alex C. Valin is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is currently working on a book project titled Low Fidelity: Tape Recording and Black Experimental Literature that examines the presence and influence of tape recording technology in late 20th century African American and Afro-Caribbean fiction and poetry. He is also currently co-editing a special issue of ariel: A Review of International English Literature titled “Ambivalent Realism in African and Afro-Diasporic Literature.” He earned his PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in October 2024, and his My Chemical Romance tattoo in February 2026.
Panel 6
Emo and Queerness - 1:30PM-3PM - Music Classroom Building 103
Chair: I.F. Gonzales
Welcome to the Black (Woman) Parade: Exploring Queer Black Women and the Emo Scene - Victoria Smith - (1:30PM-2PM)
Where is the academic literature concerning black queer women emo fans? This presentation explores the intersections of Black womanhood, queerness, emo music, and the profound emotional landscapes that emerge within this genre, positioning emo as both a musical genre and an erotic utopia (Muñoz 2009). My research underscores the importance of emo as a site of belonging and resistance, where queer Black women find solidarity, empowerment, and the opportunity to reclaim narratives such as vulnerability and joy within a genre often characterized by its white male centricity (Ryalls 2013). Drawing upon participant observation as an academic and fan, or “aca-fan” (Williams 2022) and qualitative interviews with queer Black women emos, I seek to elucidate how we access the erotic and utopic via emo musicking. I borrow the term “erotic” from Audre Lorde (1978), to move beyond queerness solely regarding sexuality, and posit queer Black women’s experiences with emo as a deep social practice, resource, and framework for emotional agency. With this presentation, I aim to foster an environment where the emotional resonances of Black women participants are foregrounded (Ahmed 2004), creating an active bulwark against the racist, classist and abelist tendencies of academia that have historically marginalized queer Black women’s contributions to this genre.
Bio:
Victoria Smith is an award winning percussionist, writer, and filmmaker from The Bronx, New York. Her passion for music and the intersection of race and gender has been a life-long interest.Throughout her career, Victoria has performed with the likes of Mike Mainieri, Bernie Williams, Connie Grossman, and Wynton Marsalis. Victoria is the drummer for Brooklyn based indie rock band, War Honey, signed to Handstand Records. Their latest EP, “All You’ll Ever Be Good For” has received positive reviews and is streaming on all platforms.Victoria is a doctoral candidate at New York University, where she is a Henry M. MacCracken and Dean’s Doctoral Fellow. Her research centers queer Black women within the emo music fandom, and the intersection of race, gender, and politics. Learn more about Victoria’s research and music on social media: @vesmithmedia.
Everything I Learned About Gender, I Learned From My Chemical Romance: Illegibility, Opacity, and Trans/Queer Worldmaking Through the Permacrisis - I.F. Gonzales (2PM-2:30PM)
During the summer of 2025, American rock band My Chemical Romance embarked on their Long Live the Black Parade stadium tour, their first public appearance as a band since March 2023. The band, once derided in the rock music press as too feminine, too mainstream, or a passing fad for moody teenage girls, has since become part of the rock music canon. But My Chemical Romance’s cultural persistence is not in spite of their performances of gendered transgression. Instead, My Chemical Romance’s trans, nonbinary, and queer community has been key to the band’s longevity. In this way, My Chemical Romance is an under-researched part of trans/queer culture, despite none of the band’s members explicitly “coming out.”
In this paper, I aim to examine two sites for My Chemical Romance as an unruly queer/trans archive: community interviews conducted during My Chemical Romance’s 2025 Long Live the Black Parade tour, and my own autoethnography as a queer, nonbinary Filipinx My Chemical Romance fan who grew up in the semi-rural exurbs of Southern Illinois. Through examining these archives, I excavate how My Chemical Romance’s practices of repulsivity, opacity, ambiguity, and refusal to be outed have served as a critical cultural site for the development of trans, nonbinary, and queer lifeways in late neoliberalism and permanent crisis. What My Chemical Romance and their fans show, I argue, is that practices of repulsivity, opacity, ambiguity, and refusal, rather than serving as forms of trans/queer erasure or closeting, function instead as worldmaking against hegemonic forms of visibility, visuality, surveillance, and gendered Capture.
Bio:
I.F. (or Isabel Felix) Gonzales is a Rising Scholars Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia and a 2025 New City Arts Fellow. Their visual and written work explores the aesthetic and political cultures of the 21st century and how queer, trans, and nonbinary people of color engage in forms of illegibility, unruliness, kin-making, escape, and refusal. In doing so, Isabel explores an eclectic archive that ranges from the Tumblr poetics and activism of the late Mark Aguhar, anti-Proposition 8 political campaigns, “gross-out” reality television, and the performances and fan cultures of American rock band My Chemical Romance.
They are a recipient of the 2025 APSA Advancing Research Grant for Early Career Scholars, and the 2022 recipient of the NCOBPS Bayard Rustin Award. Isabel’s work has been published in Politics, Groups, and Identities, The Palgrave Handbook of Fashion and Politics, Terrorism and Popular Culture, the SAGE International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender, and in non-academic essay collections, including SWARM: Answering the Call. Isabel received a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine and is currently working on their book, ALL THE BELOVED I COULDN’T DESCRIBE: Queer Illegibility and 21st Century Crisis of Identity. They have a forthcoming article in Continuum entitled "When I Grow Up, I Want to be Nothing at All: Opacity, Friction, Refusal, and Third-Wave Emo Performances of Nonbinary.”
“I am the girl that I thought I outgrew”: Constructing Midwest Emo (trans)Womanhood through the works of Modern Baseball and Slaughter Beach, Dog - Luna Maldonado-Vélez (2:30PM-3PM)
Midwest Emo, like many subgenres to form around punk and emo, has struggled to present varied perspectives outside of the white, cis, straight males that heavily populate the audiences of their shows. Women are still very present within the genre as sometimes the sole focus of songs or even entire albums. In an interview for Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo Jessica Hopper mentions that women are generally shoved into “the role of muse or heartbreaker, an object of either misery or desire. Emo just builds a cathedral of man pain and then celebrates its validation” (Greenwald 2003). While Modern Baseball and Slaughter Beach, Dog (both fronted by Jake Ewald) do contribute to the massive architecture of male pain in Midwest Emo, their discographies do show the way towards more complicated portrayals of women in songs such as “Tears Over Beers” and “Monsters”. In 2015, I was introduced to Modern Baseball’s sophomore album You’re Gonna Miss It All by a straight, white man. While I identified as nonbinary at the time, my relationship to gender was thoroughly complicated by my passion for this band and others in the genre. It convinced me that while I was not a man, masculinity had some intensive grip on my being. This paper is a loose autoethnography that explores the work of Modern Baseball and Slaughter Beach, Dog through a critical trans feminine perspective, focusing on how stereotypical emo misrepresentations of womanhood are both challenged and reinforced. I intend to map the process of identity de- and re-construction that can occur while listening to certain music over the span of a decade, showing that this music was not only part of the soundtrack to my self-discovery but also an integral part to the journey itself.
Bio:
Luna Maldonado-Velez is an Information Services and Instruction Librarian at Purdue University Fort Wayne during the day, and a zinester/poet/performance artist at night. Her research focuses on queer librarianship, performance studies, and contemporary poetry. She holds an MLIS and MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as well as a BA in Creative Writing from Truman State University.
Panel 7
Emo and Hip-Hop - 1:30PM-3PM- Tietjens 4
Chair: Varun Chandrasekhar
Rico Nasty Screams Against Hip-Hop/Emo Masculinities - Kabelo Chirwa (1:30PM-2PM)
Rico Nasty’s 2019 mixtape, Anger Management, unlocked a new stage of her career that introduced an infusion of hip-hop with nu-metal’s heavy guitar riffs and rageful, lyric screams. In the conception of this project, Rico Nasty studied Arthur Janov’s The Primal Scream and sought to represent girlhood and capture the sensations of a temper tantrum. Thus, screaming was a representation of youth and, critically, connected with hip-hop fandoms that felt othered by a society driven by hegemonic whiteness, cisness, and maleness. Though screamo, hard rock, and hip-hop are still at the center of Rico Nasty’s artistry, her 2025 album LETHAL expands on her experiential music making to reflect a maturation and embrace her new roles as a mother and a woman pioneering a distinct sonic space in hip-hop. On earlier projects Rico Nasty’s scream was a way to give agency to her younger self and offer connection to Black girlhood and queer fandoms. On LETHAL, screaming and allusions to emo transform the function of her vocalizations to connect to a new stage in her life and career. Yet, this shift in musical function to represent new life experiences that are typically assigned to femininity, again, offers a counter to the masculine sounds and narratives that dominate the various music cultures that Rico Nasty engages with.
In this way, Rico Nasty subverts gendered expectations and the function of screaming in her music. Both hip-hop and emo scholarship have emphasized the violent interactions that women and girls face in their respective scenes. Furthermore, women and queer artists are often excluded from the opportunities and camaraderie offered to their white, male, cis counterparts. Rico Nasty’s use of screaming—particularly when aligned with hardcore and emo sonic aesthetics—brings these undermined identities and fandoms into the forefront of mainstream hip-hop and offers solidarities for those othered via the gender politics of scene hierarchies. This paper recontextualizes Ryan J. Mack’s (2021) analysis of controlled vs. uncontrolled screams in emo, in which both male vocal expressions reinforce a male hegemony in emo and its related scenes. Furthermore, I position Emily Ryalls (2013) assertion that emo exploits feminine characteristics to expand the power of hegemonic masculinity within the context of Rico Nasty’s lyricism and vocal inflections on LETHAL. I argue that when Rico Nasty employs similar controlled and uncontrolled screams, especially to articulate lyrics that subvert the gendered expectations of hip-hop and emo, she disrupts the hegemonic structures that have informed each music culture.
Bio:
Kabelo Chirwa is a PhD candidate in musicology at University of Cincinnati, CCM. His dissertation, “Community Making Across the Black Diaspora: Building Networks and Narratives in Nigerian Urban Popular Music”, intertwines ethnography, autoethnography, and scholarship from critical music industry studies, economic geography, and diaspora studies. His work examines neocolonialism in international popular music and explores the intersecting communities, sounds, and cultures reflected in the musical geographies of Nigerian Urban Popular Music. Chirwa’s research has been supported by a Fulbright Study/Research grant and University of Cincinnati’s Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Chirwa also examines his relationship to U.S. coloniality in an article with Rising Voices issue 20.2 and considers his relationship to African languages in a forthcoming chapter that discusses translation and non-translation in Nigerian popular music.
“Emo” and the Symbolic Exclusion of Rap - John DeBouter (2PM-2:30PM)
Emo rap emerged on Soundcloud in the mid-2010s characterized by its emotional lyrics, melodic rapping, trap beats, and guitar-heavy instrumental sampling. The rise of artists like Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert, XXXTentacion, and Juice WRLD ushered emo rap from SoundCloud obscurity into the mainstream. To this date, emo rap albums account for the most-streamed and four of the top ten most streamed rap albums of all time on Spotify. Before the emergence of emo rap, emo had been largely white and middle class in the demographics of its artists and audiences (de Boise 2014). In recent years, emo rap has helped broaden the socioeconomic and racial scope of emo’s participants with predominantly black and working-class artists and a racially diverse and class-fractional audience. Emo rappers bring unique perspectives of place, inequality, and labor to emo’s familiar explorations of depression, anxiety, and existentialism.
Given that the current “fifth wave” of emo is characterized by a musical and social broadening of the genre space, it might be assumed that emo rap would be a welcome addition to emo (Howie 2024). While some fans, scholars, and emo musicians have certainly embraced these new participants and perspectives, many have protested that emo rap is not and cannot be “real” emo. Extensive gatekeeping can be found in online forums, journalistic publications, and peer-reviewed scholarship. In this paper, I first argue that emo rap is emo by musical and functional definitions: an analysis of Juice WRLD’s “Wishing Well” (2020) identifies several well-accepted musical markers of emo, such as melodic and passionately-delivered vocals, emotional lyrics, and rock instrumentation, the latter produced virtually. In making these arguments, I acknowledge the slipperiness of genre when it comes to categorization. Emo is particularly challenging given the vast sonic and aesthetic differences across its historical waves. I draw from several theoretical frameworks when navigating the complex interplay of musical and social aspects that contribute to one’s perception of genre (Brackett 2016, Kallberg 1988, Fabbri 1980). For my examination of the genre “emo,” I consult recent scholarship and published work on emo, including that which rejects emo rap’s legitimacy (Fathallah 2020, Markarian 2019). When dismissing emo rap as wholly incongruous with emo, fans and scholars enact what Bryson (1996) calls a “symbolic exclusion” of emo rap from the genre space. Symbolic exclusion is characterized by prejudicial boundary-drawing through taste that continually reproduces class- and race-based exclusivity. When it comes to taste, dislike is significantly associated with cultural objects that indicate working-classness or blackness. Ultimately, I conclude that the exclusion of emo rap is primarily not based on actual musical features but is instead a class- and race-based reaction to rap music that is weaponized against emo rap to reproduce white and middle-class boundaries around “real” emo. music that is weaponized against emo rap to reproduce white and middle-class boundaries around “real” emo.
Bio:
John (Jack) DeBouter is a music theorist, composer, and violist currently pursuing his PhD in Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin. His interests include popular music, genre theory, social class theory, hermeneutics, and broader conceptions of music and meaning. Previous work has examined specific performance practices and their interpretive significance in contemporary hip-hop as well as music’s role in mental health regulation and as a community-building and subcultural agent for Gen Z in the United States. Current research focuses on genre expression, interaction, and perception in American popular musics, with specific focus on emo rap and online music subcultures.
“CAN I STILL GET INTO HEAVEN IF I KILL MYSELF”: La Dispute and Emo’s Suburban Whiteness- Varun Chandrasekhar (2:30PM-3PM)
Michigan-based emo band La Dispute “King Park” chronicles the death of an unintended teenage victim of a drive-by shooting. The song, narrated by a ghost who follows the shooter as he attempts to flee the police, climaxes with the murderer screaming, “Can I still get into Heaven if I kill myself” as a way to avoid his oncoming punishment. Shockingly, the song ends abruptly, offering no resolution to the story’s tragedy. Although the song does not explicitly state that the shooter was Black, the lyrical reference to endemic gang violence in a city with a relatively large Black population signals Blackness, which contrasts against La Dispute’s generally white performance style (Kajikawa 2023).
I argue that the song should be read as an exemplar of emo’s complex relationship to its own whiteness. I argue that emo reflects the contradictions that emerge out of white flight to the suburbs. La Dispute’s treatment of the narrator, a literal ghost, symbolizes the white desire to be aware of, but safely distanced from, Black culture. If the suburbs used whiteness to implicitly confirm their “homogeneity, containment, and predictability” (Avila 2006, 6), then La Dispute, through making their whiteness hypervisible (Dyer 1997, Yancy 2012), notes how such suburban flight (which gave birth to emo) constructs an urban Other. I provide a hermeneutic reading of the song’s incomplete ending, noting how the song ends without a clear conclusion, arguing the incompleteness expresses a racialized understanding of Carillo-Vincent’s (2013, 38) claim that emo is a “normative critique of normativity.”
Bio:
Varun's research reframes discussions of "freedom" in jazz cultures through a lens of Sartrean existentialism. Building upon Sartre's claim that freedom is the anxious reality of being forced to take action in an objectively meaningless world, Varun argues that jazz represents the freedom of enduring the absurdities of the racialized existence of its musicians. Varun then applies these insights to explicate the life and music of the jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus, arguing that Mingus's eccentric, exaggerated, and enigmatic actions demonstrate the anxious existence of the jazz musician.
In addition to his work on jazz, Varun also studies pop-punk and emo music, highlighting the ways the genres respond to the depressing state of neoliberal decay. In the Spring of 2026, Varun will host "A Conference...But It's Midwestern Emo," the first conference dedicated to the study of emo music.
Varun has had articles published in the journals Jazz and Culture, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Musicology Now, and reviews published in The Journal for the Society of American Music, The Journal of Jazz Studies, and The Journal of Musicological Research. Varun has presented his research at a litany of national and international conferences, including all three major music conferences (AMS, SMT, SEM), Cultural Studies Conferences, Jazz Studies Conferences, and Popular Music Studies Conferences. Varun's research has been supported by WashU's Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship and WashU's American Cultural Studies Department's Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow. He is also an affiliate of WashU's Center for the Study of Race, Equity, and Ethnicity.
In his free time, Varun can be found playing guitar, watching sports, or blundering pieces in
Panel 8
Musical-Theoretical Approaches to Emo and Genre - 1:30PM-3PM - Blewett Hall Conference Room
Chair: Stephen Hudson
Once, Twice—Unfortunately it was Thrice: Metrical Dissonance and Musical Narrative in the Music of Thrice - Harry Ward (1:30PM-2PM)
While Thrice might not be at the top of any “100 Best Emo Bands” list, they do possess a “dramatic emotional quality” to their music, which is the very nucleus of emo culture. Formed in California in 1998, Thrice is mainly known for their post-hardcore musical style, but have experimented in and solidified their status as a multi-genre blending group that really doesn’t care about specific labels. From indie-rock and thrash metal to pop-punk and electronic music, Thrice has crossed the genre-bridge multiple times, never really settling on any specific sound. And that is what makes Thrice the ultimate band for the study of “emo” music.
This presentation analyzes several works from Thrice in an attempt to contribute to the study of metrical dissonance and musical narrative of “popular” music. Thrice is well known for their incorporation of complex time signatures, irregular (but smooth) metrical shifts, and conflicting beat patterns in common time. However, an often overlooked element of this stylistic choice is the musical narrative behind these metrical dissonances. Thrice often employes metrical dissonance and subsequent consonance to mirror the lyrical conflict/resolution of the emotional message being portrayed. Dustin Kensrue often employs complex but allegorical “emo” themes of life, death, faith, and societal struggle—which is often emulated by metrical dissonance and subsequent “release,” or metrical conformity.
If emo culture has a history of “identity crisis,” it’s only fitting that Thrice’s first true studio album was aptly named “Identity Crisis,” an album that would cement their legacy as an “elder emo” band that comments on, challenges, and conforms to a number of social, cultural, and musical discourses that require a detailed engagement with theoretical frameworks, emo cultures, and the music, itself. Through musical narrative and metrical dissonance, Thrice has done just that, from being a band from 1998 to today (28 years), to 15 different albums of reflection, introspection, and at its core, emo-ness.
Bio:
Harry Ward is an ABD Candidate in the PhD. Music Theory program at the University of Arizona. His research interests include the music of Alfred Schnittke, postmodern music, rhythm and meter, popular music, and music theory/aural skills pedagogy. As an elder emo, Harry began his musical career as the drummer and back-up vocalist of a local screamo/pop-punk band in the early 2000s. This entrenchment in the emo scene set the foundation for his academic interest in rhythm and meter, musical form, and narrative. Outside of academic interests, Harry is a professional chef that enjoys supporting local artists, volunteering, and pretending he is good at golf.
Emo, core, and the not-so-cool metalcore: Recontextualized Timbral Invariance and schizophrenic formal structures in "Schizophrenia Legacy” - Avinoam Foonberg (2PM-2:30PM)
The opening of the Callous Daoboys’ “Schezophrenia Legacy” greets its listeners with a dizzying concoction of aggressive screaming, surrealist lyrics with formal sections shifting to nasal vocal singing and emotional lyrics exemplifying an emo aesthetic, as well as an infamous and unexpected saxophone groove bridge. A first-time listener would naturally be overwhelmed by the song’s seemingly “chaotic” and “disorienting” nature. Yet, despite the song's tumultuous nature, a closer look at the formal construction of the individual musical sections, timbral content, and contrasts between metalcore and emo signifiers present a more intentional and coherent musical construction. This paper argues that timbral genre-signifying contrasts in “Schezophrania Legacy” superimpose two verse-chorus teleologies (Nobile 2020) and reinterprets the song’s vocal screaming to an emo-coded form of vocal scream antithetical to the track’s opening masculine-coded metalcore vocals (Hillier 2020; Mack 2021). This paper approaches its analysis through an interdisciplinary methodology considering timbral signifiers, spectrogram analysis, and musical form. The first part of this analysis considers recontextualized timbral invariance (RTI) that signify metalcore and emo musical segments in this track. RTIs recontextualize timbral segments that share a similar timbral profile or grouping effect (McAdams et al. 2021) but are contextually transformed into distinct genre signifiers with a new set of marked and unmarked timbres (Lavengood 2021). Using this framework of RTIs, this paper uses spectrograms to identify individual sections belonging to distinctly emo and metalcore genre segments that form dual verse-chorus trajectories (Nobile 2020) through metalcore and emo segments. Together, the use of metalcore and emo genre signifiers generate a unique musical narrative of musical irony through a subversion of masculine vocal techniques reinterpreted as emo genre signifiers that exemplify subordinate masculinity (Mack 2021). Considering the role of emo thus not only helps unravel its complex structure, but also transforms its seemingly chaotic use of genre into a rich and multifaceted narrative.
Bio:
Avinoam Foonberg is music theorist, lecturer at Wichita State University, and piano technician. His research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to timbre analysis and musical form. His research interests range from classical to popular music focusing on extreme metal music in the twenty-first century. This research was presented at various music theory conferences including the Society of Music Theory, Music Theory Society of New York State, Music Theory society of Mid-Atlantic and Music Theory SouthEast. In 2024 he was invited to present his research on timbral analysis at The New School University. He is currently completing his dissertation on “Embodied Timbral Transformations” from the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music.
Is “One” or “Blind” Emo Metal? And Why the Answer “No” Might Help Define Emo - Stephen Hudson (2:30PM-3PM)
If you do a web search for “emo metal,” there’s no clear consensus on what music this (perhaps unlikely) combination of genre labels might refer to. I analyze two possible groups of songs which are definitely metal but probably not really “emo,” to help define emo music: Metallica’s ballads (like “Fade to Black” or “One”), and Korn’s autobiographical accounts of enduring child abuse (like “Daddy” or, less directly, “Blind”).
There are three senses of “Emo.” First, a set of musical styles—bands that sound like My Chemical Romance, Antioch Arrow, American Football, etc. Second, “music emo kids listen to,” as testified by many fan-created playlists, which includes most pop punk, nu metal, and alternative rock 1990–2010. Third, a general-purpose adjective: saying something is “kind of emo” means it is sad and extraordinarily it is emotional relative to some given context. The songs identified above by Metallica and Korn are certainly “emo” in this third sense. They overlap with the lyrical topics, emotive register, and mode of addressing listeners in some of the strictest sense of “emo” music—expressing the artist’s own felt emotions, for example, rather than describing emotions in the second or third person; appealing to the audience for sympathy, rather than describing emotions in an impersonal or disconnected way; etc.
One definitive parameter of “emo music” which is not shared by Korn and Metallica is a narrow range of distinct vocal styles, which I will explore drawing on Heidemann (2016) and Eidsheim (2019). Emo’s distinct vocality, often derided as “whiny” or “self-absorbed,” is not only “emotional” but is heard to represent a certain demographic—young, suburban, middle-class, disillusioned—and seems to embody how both fans and critics think of that demographic. This vocality is evident throughout a lot of “emo” music in the strictest sense, but also a lot of “music emo kids listen to”—but, notably, not Metallica or Korn, or much of what could be labelled “emo metal,” which tends to use metal’s own distinctive flavors of fantastical vocality (Hudson 2026).
Bio:
Stephen S. Hudson is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Occidental College. He studies metal music, focusing on embodied cognition and listeners’ subjective construction of musical experience. His first book Heaviness in Metal Music, which draws on music theory and embodied cognition to explore how fans create their own experiences of physical impact while listening, will be published in Spring 2026 by Oxford University Press. Stephen’s other research topics include harmony in R&B music, including a recent article in Current Musicology about multi-layer harmonies in songs by Drake, and hybrids between EDM and verse/chorus song forms.
Panel 9
The Black Parade - 3:30PM-5PM - Music Classroom Building 102
Chair: Patrick Mitchell
Sterile Affect: The Hospital as a Site of Authority, Expression, and Subversion in The Black Parade - Heather Glenny (3:30PM-4PM)
This paper thinks about the narrative, epistemological, and affective space of the hospital in the 2006 pop-punk/pop-emo album The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance. Simultaneously a site of medical authority and institutional knowledge, a space of isolation from the rest of the world, and a sterilized stage for some of life’s most emotionally charged moments, what does the hospital make available to the narrative commitments of MCR’s world-building and story-telling arc, and to its investments in themes of subversion, anti-authoritarianism, death, loss, and hope? Looking at how the hospital is constructed in the album–lyrics, recorded sounds (e.g. heart-rate monitors), visual aesthetics (e.g. “The Patient” album art), performance (music videos and concert clips)–this analysis asks about the ways emo music stages complex orientations toward institutional sites of knowledge like the Western medical hospital.
Bio:
Heather Glenny is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Approaches to Science, Technology, and Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago. Her work centers medical education and cadaver dissection in art, literature, and popular culture.
Concepts of Sweet Revenge: My Chemical Romance and the power of worldbuilding - Lauren Posklensky (4PM-4:30PM)
This paper asserts that the essence of what makes My Chemical Romance unique and has allowed them to capture both mainstream success and cult dedication is their unusual dedication to highly detailed worldbuilding, with increasingly ambitious projects that elevate their concepts beyond the music itself.
The paper and resulting presentation will be structured in two parts. The first will draw from an unpublished 2024 paper, which takes an in-depth look at the band’s discography through the lens of concept albums to trace the evolution of their worldbuilding. This is supported by analysis of additional non-musical media, live performances, and fan engagement, as well as contemporary journalism on My Chemical Romance, academic literature on concept albums, and comparison to acclaimed artists who have explored similar approaches.
The second section centers on the recent North American tour for the 20th anniversary of The Black Parade and how it expands the immersive nature of My Chemical Romance’s work even further. By surveying the performances and general free-form media presented by the band over the course of a year, as well as the resulting impact on the fan base, this part discusses how the band continues to reach new heights of immersion and innovation by returning to and reinterpreting existing lore despite the absence of new music.
The conclusion of this paper demonstrates that, despite the controversy over an exact genre label for My Chemical Romance, their novel and comprehensive vision for the band has had an undeniably profound impact on the internal character and mainstream perspective of the emo subculture and alternative music in general. It will finish with theorizing and discussion of how My Chemical Romance’s recent transformation of their existing discography and lore may continue to influence the future of the emo subculture and the definition of a band identity.
Bio:
Lauren Posklensky is a second year Masters student studying Library and Information Sciences at Simmons University. She previously received her BA in English Literature from the University of Vermont, and worked as a freelance promoter in the Vermont DIY punk community. Lauren's current research focuses on the intersections between punk ideology and radical community-led archival theory. Other professional interests include equitable cataloging, Medieval literature, and transformative fan works.
I’m Not Okay-fabe: The Complex Position of Audience in My Chemical Romance’s ‘Long Live’ Tour - Sam Hark (4:30PM-5PM)
In recent years, critics and scholars have noted the strange, ever-growing relationship betweenUnited States politics and kayfabe (Weinstein 2011, Herrmann 2016, Ashford 2025). Kayfabe, a term primarily associated with professional wrestling, is the presentation of an artificial spectacle as genuine. Wrestling is a unique form of theater with intense trash-talking, bitter rivalries, and dramatic story-beats. While the athleticism is impressive, there is no true competition between wrestlers: the moves are staged, and the ends of the matches are pre-determined. In the discourse surrounding political kayfabrication, Donald Trump has become a key person of interest (Mazer 2018, Weinstein 2025). Trump was affiliated with World Wrestling Entertainment for many years, and the rhetoric he brought to his campaign trail in 2016 resembled the exaggerated, grandiose posturing of wrestlers. Once he was elected, Trump did away with the solemnity of the presidency, and ushered in a new era of bombastic, boisterous, and inflammatory politics.
Mere days after Trump won the presidency for the second time in 2024, My Chemical Romance released a video promoting their upcoming tour, “‘Long Live’ The Black Parade.” The trailer’s description told a fascinating tale about the fictional country of Draag, its Grand Immortal Dictator, and the dictator’s national band, The Black Parade. Audiences were informed that the dictator had reinstated The Black Parade’s working privileges so that, through their music, all could celebrate the glorious Concrete Age of Draag, and behold the nation’s prosperity and prowess. Intrigued by the premise, fans were eager to immerse themselves in the kayfabe of this crafted universe. The unspoken understanding was that, for this tour, MCR would take on the identity of The Black Parade, and concertgoers would participate as citizens of Draag. When the time came to assume their positions as Draagoshkas, ‘Long Live’ tour attendees witnessed simulated acts of cruelty and violence ranging from political executions to the detonation of nuclear warheads—all while the Grand Immortal Dictator applauded.
Given the timing of the tour and its theatrical content, many interpreted ‘Long Live’ as a scathing critique of the Trump administration (Georgi 2024, Bolsvert 2025). Intentionally or not, the band skillfully used kayfabe to reflect the absurdity of current U.S. politics. Beyond the surface-level messaging, however, the kayfabe also levied heavy criticism against the audience. Pulling from auto/ethnographic sources, fan pages, interviews, and scholarly literature, this paper highlights the similarities between the kayfabe of Trump’s politics and MCR’s ‘Long Live’ tour. It analyzes how ‘Long Live’ forces audience members to temporarily live in the uncomfortable parallel of their real political landscape, and documents fan responses. It addresses the complicity of ‘Long Live’ attendees in both fake and real governmental systems. Finally, this paper opens a dialogue about how audiences can interpret theatrical calls to action.
Bio:
Sam Hark is a second-year Ph.D. student in Musicology at Indiana University Bloomington. Originally from Long Island, New York, Sam received a B.A. in Music with Departmental Honors from Stony Brook University. Sam’s most recent projects have revolved around popular music and resistance, musical activism during the AIDS crisis, and the soundscapes of local game shops.
Panel 10
Emo and Visual Cultures - 3:30PM-5PM - Music Classroom Building 103
Chair: Francecsa Sorbande
Catastrophe: Car Crashes, Oceans, and the Aesthetics of Emo Subculture - Kristen Martinez (3:30PM-4PM)
From the early 2000s through the 2010s, third-wave emo, post-hardcore, and metalcore were at their peak, and the U.S. technological cultural landscape accelerated. Youth cultures experienced geopolitical instability and collective anxiety following the turn of the millennium, shaped by the post-9/11 attacks, the Bush administration’s security politics, and a series of highly publicized natural disasters. Through its visual and sonic practices, emo music reframed catastrophe as a site of meaning-making, resilience, and emotional resurgence. Although the social dimensions of emo have received meaningful scholarly attention, its visual semiotics represent a growing area of inquiry. This paper asks why emo culture in the third wave became so visually and lyrically preoccupied with nature, catastrophe, and bodily violence, arguing that such motifs served as semiotic tools through which artists articulated both personal affect and collective cultural unease. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding model (1973), Dick Hebdige’s theory of subcultural style (1979), and Roland Barthes’ semiotic method of “reading signs,” this paper traces the development of emo iconography across band logos, album art, merchandise, and lyrics. Focusing on bands such as Thrice, Circa Survive, A Skylit Drive, Eyes Set to Kill, Alesana, Thursday, and The Bled, I examine recurring images of disaster through three modes: (1) nature, (2) mythology, and (3) car crashes. Synthesizing cultural scholarship by Deena Weinstein (1991) and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (1996), I argue that these visual, musical, and lyrical elements juxtapose beauty with monstrosity, allowing artists to encode romantic betrayal, disillusionment, and political and existential vulnerability. Ultimately, emo’s aesthetic language functions as a shared subcultural vocabulary that transforms fear and instability into expressive power. This process illuminates how youth cultures and fans used this music and imagery to process emotions, shape their identities, and construct affective memory in an era of crisis.
Bio:
Kristy Martinez is a PhD Candidate in Musicology at UCLA as well as a vocalist and archivist. Her work examines subcultural movements in the southern California as well as ephemera, placemaking, music analysis, and iconography with a focus on punk and emo. Her family is from Sonora, Mexico, and she has grown up in the San Gabriel Valley area. She has also created a D.I.Y. digital archive “Indigenous Punx Archive” to document punk in the Southwest with flyers, photos, videos, and information on bands. This archive has been included in the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Denver Art Museum.
Latex, Whips, and Minivans: How Be Your Own Pet’s Mommy (2023) Confronts Youth through Punk’s History of BDSM Aesthetics - Abigail Ryan and Jerika Hayes (4PM-4:30PM)
Two concepts that have accompanied the legacy of punk rock are the spirit of youth rebellion and incorporation of subversive countercultures, namely the aesthetics of BDSM. Early feminist musicians including Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux, and designer Vivienne Westwood, used these styles to create social commentary, push the envelope, and demonstrate the personal liberation found in youth revolting against the entrenched systems of old. Both the adoption of the subversive visuals of BDSM— an acronym from three sets of terms: bondage/discipline, domination/submission, and sadomasochism—and punk’s ties to youth have unfortunately led to the acceptance, visibility, and opportunity within the music subculture to decline drastically for those outside the youth demographic. In 2023, American garage-punk band Be Your Own Pet unexpectedly released a new album, a full fifteen years after their untimely breakup in 2008. The album, titled Mommy, was both a return to their biting, noisy rock, and a new venture for the band as they unabashedly explore aging, motherhood, and politics through BDSM related metaphor and aesthetics. Our findings are established through close readings of music and lyrics from the album, informed by literature on punk and feminism by Vivien Goldman and Sheila Whitely, aging and pop music by Abigail Gardner, as well as Margot Weiss’ concept of “working at play” in BDSM subculture. In this paper, we argue that on Mommy, Be Your Own Pet uses BDSM signifiers to carve out space for 30 and 40-something punks to explore adulthood with the freedom and fearlessness usually reserved for youth. Through these complex juxtapositions, we posit that Be Your Own Pet not only furthers the lineage of punk and BDSM, but offers a fresh perspective on the difficulties of aging, feminism, and what it means to be punk.
Bios:
Jerika Hayes is a recent graduate of the University of Cincinnati where she earned her master’s degree in Musicology. Her research focuses on women musicians, gender studies, and community. She currently wears many career-hats— she is a jazz piano teacher, a music critic for audiophile magazine The Absolute Sound, church musician, and an apprentice in historic stained glass restoration. She loves her cats, her partner, and playing bass in her punk band Girl Gordon.
Abigail M. Ryan is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on the intersection of choral singing and trauma, detailed in her forthcoming dissertation. At UC, Abby has served as journal editor for the Music Research Forum and as President of the Music Theory Musicology Society. When she’s not deep in research or writing, Abby enjoys spending time with her partner, teaching voice and piano lessons, and looking after little ones at her church where she runs the nursery and youth chorus.
Girl Genes: Androgyny, Feminine Performance, and the Problem of Authenticity in Third Wave Emo - Ella Martini (4:30PM-5PM)
This presentation explores how camp, excess, and queer/femme sensibilities influenced the formation of mainstream emo in the mid-2000s. During this era, emo broke into the mainstream via bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Taking Back Sunday, whose success is largely owed to the legions of dedicated young women supporting them on emerging social media platforms. At this moment, emo’s aesthetics also diverged from their white-masculine basement roots and gave up jeans and t-shirts in favor of stylized costumes, makeup, and rhinestone accessories. In this project, I analyze emo’s aesthetic shift toward feminine and queer sensibilities in the 2000s and examine how this new aesthetic philosophy conflicted with notions of “authenticity” in the post-hardcore scene. I also compare this moment in emo’s history to glam rock of the 1970s, which rejected rock’s emphasis on relatability at the time to instead celebrate performativity and artifice as a vehicle for self-expression. Through this history, we can understand what happens when feminine and queer tastes come into conflict with masculinist notions of authenticity and evade legibility within masculine-coded subcultural frameworks.
Bio:
Ella Martini is a dual master’s student from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. She will graduate in May with an MFA in Visual Art and an MA in Critical Studies. Her work focuses on femininity and gender dynamics in masculine-coded fan spaces, and she is currently attempting to finish two thesis projects on emo at the same time. She is a writer, researcher, and creative programmer who builds websites about boys kissing to put in art galleries.
Panel 11
Emo and the Archive - 3:30PM-5PM - Tietjens 4
Chair: Marc Blanc
You Can't Miss What You Forget: Practical Challenges in Archiving Emo and Preserving Cultural Memory - Alexandra Plante (3:30PM-4PM)
In local scenes and on the national stage, emo music generated a wide range of cultural materials produced by musicians and fans, including, but not limited to CDs, cassettes, vinyl records, photographs, fan-made zines, show flyers, and artwork. In addition to these physical formats, emo music found a natural home in an increasingly digital world in the 2000s. These materials documented not only musical production but also local spaces of care, identity formation, and community belonging. Platforms such as PureVolume, MySpace, LiveJournal, and message boards functioned as central spaces where fans discovered, interacted with, and connected around emo music, while simultaneously serving as informal repositories for music, images, commentary, and scene-specific knowledge.
Today, much of this material exists in increasingly unstable formats or environments that resist preservation. Born-digital records embedded within commercial platforms are vulnerable to platform collapse, policy changes, and data loss, while DIY physical materials often fall outside standard institutional collecting priorities due to space and resource constraints and collection policy. As a result, large portions of emo’s cultural record—particularly those tied to small, local scenes and marginalized participants—risk being lost, degraded, or unevenly preserved. These conditions position emo subculture as a revealing case study for examining the limits of existing archival frameworks when confronted with interconnected digital and physical materials produced outside formal institutional contexts.
This paper argues that archiving emo is not a niche concern but an example of broader preservation challenges facing us as the 21st century progresses. Emo’s precarious record offers practical insights for librarians and archivists grappling with platform dependence, DIY media, and community-driven memory in an increasingly unstable digital landscape.
Bio:
Alex was born in New Jersey and saw her first punk show in a church basement at age 14. There was a lot in between, but she earned a B.A. in History from Drew University, an M.A. in Medieval Studies from Fordham University, and her Master of Information from Rutgers University. Her research interests lay somewhere between medieval saint worship and the Shakespearean teleplays of The CW television network. In addition to her scholarly pursuits, she is a 500 hour registered yoga teacher who teaches weekly classes. She is Very Online and can be found yapping on Threads, Instagram, and Substack.
Preservation, Discovery, and Production: Perspectives on Emo and DIY Music from an Academic Librarian in the 21st century - Keno Catabay and Kristi Ford (4PM-4:30PM)
When American Football released their critically acclaimed LP1 (1999), it was largely noted by members of the group that few people, outside of college radio stations, really cared for it. In the years that followed, the album persisted in relative obscurity, surviving only within the underground indie and emo music echo chambers until its near sudden explosion into prominence in the early 2010s. D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L (2000) by the British indie rock band Panchiko offers a different, yet vaguely similar journey in its explosion into the limelight. In 2016, one of the 30 CDs of the sub-19-minute EP that the band burned was found by chance in the UK and uploaded to 4chan, prompting a hunt for its creators who never wrote their last names on the back of the album. Thanks to the slender digital footprint of the lead singer that led to a shot-in-the-dark Facebook message by an enthusiast in 2020, the band eventually became aware of their underground popularity and have since remade themselves.
In this paper we offer our perspectives as scholars of library and information science, which are divided into three parts: preservation of emo and DIY music, discovering and accessing emo music, and the ways that libraries, as community hubs, may serve as incubators for DIY music production and gatherings. There is limited literature on the preservation of emo and emo-adjacent DIY music in the 21st century vis-à-vis how the works themselves endure outside the zeitgeist of more popular music, but also how the works function as cultural objects that warrant digital preservation to ensure accessibility and future research into the emo subculture. Furthermore, the discovery of underground emo artists by larger audiences calls for deeper inspection, in part due to the emergence of the internet and algorithmic recommendations on commercial streaming platforms. Although these platforms offer a range of benefits for artists and users, it befalls a community of individuals dedicated to stepping away from non-commercial streaming platforms to discover forgotten, uncataloged, or under-circulated musical works.
Bios:
Keno Catabay is Principal Cataloger, Head of Special Materials Cataloging Section, and Assistant Professor for the University Libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research interests broadly focus on inclusive and ethical metadata usage.
Kristi Ford is Digital Archivist for the University Libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder. She holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies from Central European University.
Some Double-Dipped Meaning: The Evolution of the Words “Meme” and “Emo” (2000s–2020s) - Amanda Brennan (4:30PM-5PM)
While the word “meme” was coined a few years before “emo” was, the trajectories of how these words were used in culture followed a similar growth path in the 2000s and 2010s. The early ‘00s internet had users on MySpace and LiveJournal arguing over nuances between D.C. hardcore and early Chicago emo while they were also sharing early image macros and YTMND! links on BBS boards. The internet was reminiscent of a local music scene you had to be online to participate in. Like the bands you listened to, what memes you were familiar with were cultural signifiers that gave people a way to connect. Memes were passed around online communities like mixtapes, social capital that existed online only.
In 2006, technology changed. Twitter was launched. Google bought YouTube. Facebook started allowing anyone above 13 to register for the platform. The phrase “the internet is leaking” started appearing online as internet culture was gaining more audience outside of digital space. As new people started to get jacked in, the word “meme” itself also started to change. These more online folks watched as memes started to be something people talked about offline, on t-shirts and television, without their original contexts and used incorrectly
That wasn’t all that was happening in 2006. It was when My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade” was released and emo started seeing huge commercial growth. Bands like Fall Out Boy, Bright Eyes, Paramore, Panic! at the Disco all started becoming associated with the word “emo” as emo started to become more integrated into pop culture. Just like “meme,” the definition of the genre began to expand with this new audience, resulting in a question of what the word emo really meant to begin with.
This paper will explore how the words “meme” and “emo” have been used within internet communities and how both words changed in parallel once they started to hit offline commercial success. This paper will use a variety of internet archives and still-online primary sources to dig into the linguistic culture of both of these words, how and why they were used by different communities, and how audience growth affected their meanings in tandem.
Being twenty years out, this paper will also explore how time and nostalgia has changed the meaning of these words. As pop culture shifted more online and younger generations started exploring both cultural worlds, we will speak with newer fans about what it means to participate in a post-2006 commodified context of emo and memes.
Bio:
Amanda Brennan doesn’t just study the internet; she organizes its chaos. As the world’s first Meme Librarian, Amanda turned a lifelong obsession with metadata—sparked by Audiogalaxy and midwest emo—into a career as a digital strategist and taxonomist.
From her early days at Know Your Meme to her seven-year tenure at Tumblr, Amanda has been a human engine behind the data. At Tumblr, she built and scaled the taxonomy that quantified the site’s global fandom, turning billions of posts into meaningful cultural insights. Since 2021, she has applied her expertise to the world of influencer marketing, architecting information structures that bridge the gap between creators and data.
A Rutgers MLIS graduate and a proud product of the New Jersey punk scene, Amanda is currently writing the book on early internet communities. When she isn't documenting digital history, she’s likely on the barricade with her wife at a Cursive show.
Panel 12
Panel 12 - Emo and Deterritorialization - Blewett Hall Conference Room
Chair: Tyler Howie
The Logic of Time in Emo Music - w perillat (3:30PM-4PM)
This paper will present a detailed examination of emo music’s conception of time through Althusser’s notion of structural causality (Althusser 1963) and Deleuze’s theories of temporal synthesis (Deleuze 1968). The ‘emo’ genre, widely known for its public and introspective displays of emotion, traces its origins to the emotional hardcore scene of the 1980s, where albums such as Rites of Spring by Rites of Spring and What Was Behind by The Hated articulated this emotional portrayal (de Boise 2014, Mall 2019). If works of emo music are considered as reflections of the author’s own subjective temporal experience, then deep analysis of their works can offer insight into how creators experience and structure time. The recurring use of significant events in the author’s life as moments of emotional introspection exemplifies Althusser’s idea that “the whole is not the result of its’ parts; rather, the parts exist as the relations of the structure of the whole” (Althusser 1963). In the emo genre, these events form the nodes of a network whose connections define the broader temporal structure of the artist. Throughout the genre’s history, structural causality manifests in three different modes: passive synthesis, in which events are repeated and ingrained as habits in the author’s psyche; active synthesis, in which recollected events from the past coexist with the present; and empty time, where an event’s intensity fractures habitual repetition and attains metaphorical significance (Deleuze 1968). This paper will demonstrate these modes through detailed analyses of three representative albums: Just Got Back from the Discomfort – We’re Alright by Brave Little Abacus (passive synthesis), Rot Forever by Sioux Falls (active synthesis), and I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted To by Snowing (empty time). Together, these case studies will illustrate the ways individual experience shapes the temporal logic underlying emo music.
Bio:
w perillat is an artist based in Los Angeles. with an education in theater arts and philosophy, their work largely concerns the intersection of structuralism and transgression. their upcoming film, I Love Los Angeles, is a loose remake of Bumfights and deals with the processing of love through trauma. Otherwise, they have nothing going on in their life.
Our Home as Our Cage: How The Hotelier Responds to the Loss of a Concrete Home - James Milstead (4PM-4:30PM)
The lyrical material of fourth wave emo often tackles the volatile emotions that come out of growing out of adolescence into a world of shaky relationships and suffocating capitalism. Out of this, the concept of home appears in the work of these emo lyricists as a representation of middle-class America’s disappointing status and as a source of nostalgia. (This trend coincides with the common fourth wave emo usage of album cover art picturing a single suburban house, in imitation of American Football’s cover art.) The Hotelier’s album Home, Like Noplace is There tackles this homeward fixation by portraying the psychological effects of losing a sense of home. However, the album reveals the deeper problem at the heart of this fixation by portraying its subjects coming to the realization that the phenomenon of home does not necessarily refer to the specific places where they grew up, and so are left existentially directionless without a concrete concept of home to be tethered to. (As the narrator sings, “Wish I was home, oh, but no place was there.”) This article involves a close reading of the album’s lyrical content to understand not only how the lyrics portray the consequences of this directionlessness but also how they resolve it. This analysis of the album’s lyrics also provides a useful lens through which to understand emo’s fourth wave and its shift into its fifth wave.
Bio:
James Milstead is majoring in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, with concentrations in English in linguistics. His writing has varied widely, ranging from historical and sociolinguistic survey to literary criticism and poetry. Last year, he was selected for the University of Chicago’s Program for Public Thinking, where he participated in a workshop on the theme of “Art and Immorality.” This year, his research is being published in Making History, and previously his creative work has been published in the literary magazines From the Brush and Gossamer Arts. He is the bassist for the shoegaze-emo act n0stalgia.
Queering Emo Time with Say Anything - Peter Trigg (4:30PM-5PM)
For better or worse, emo has long been known as a genre obsessed with death and morbidity, from 30 Seconds to Mars’s “The Kill” to Hawthorne Heights’s “Ohio is for Lovers.” The darkness doesn’t scare listeners off though. Among other things, it provides a musical space for cathartic negative affects or “bad feelings”—a pleasurable way of experiencing and managing difficult emotions. I have discussed in other public presentations how the themes and affects common to emo could build a scaffolding for a particular kind of masculinity that I call the Bitter Emo Boy, where the emo’s own shame becomes sublimated into misogy nistic displays for approval. Those analyses relied on the idea of affective texture, per Eve Sedgwick, as a significant factor in our feelings during listening. The harsh vocal harmonies and antiphonies from Adam Lazzara and John Nolan in Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the E (Cut from the Team)” lead listeners to understand and empathize with the narrator’s mental and emotional state by texturally modeling their anger and despair. In this presentation, I expand on that textural model to include aspects of musical timing, including tempo, time-feel, and the particularities of timing in melodies, rhythms, and pauses. This discussion of Say Anything’s “The Futile” builds connections between and among emo’s bad but important feelings, musical temporal fluctuations, and the experience of a queer or disabled life that has been displaced from models of middle-class success. Following the example of Mariusz Kozak, I explicate how individual musical moments of temporal disorientation align with lyrical and textural affective objects, effectively orienting listeners into given affective shapes. In another manner of speaking, musical time interpolates listeners into a new space, calling them to act and think in particular ways. This model of inquiry takes the feelings that emo produces seriously, asking how nihilism and suicidality might be modeled in musical time, but also how they might be subverted and redirected toward queer life.
Bio:
Peter Trigg is a popular music scholar who works primarily in feminist affect studies, investigating musical feeling and gender norms in the post-Reagan era. He successfully defended his dissertation "Popular Listening as Method: A Feminist Affective Analysis of Third-Wave Emo" in June 2025 at the University of Western Ontario, and he would be happy to talk to you about emo, pop, jazz, and any open positions in your department.