PIQUE GOES POP! #PiqueXdepaul Pop culture con. ‘26
This feels like as good a time as any to mention one of the people who has quietly helped shape Pique from the beginning: Andy — also known as Pope or Andrew Pope, depending on the context.
Pope & Ramon, partial panoramic selfie
Pope’s role in Pique has usually existed somewhere behind the scenes: helping think through ideas before they become problems, handling contracts, offering perspective when projects start drifting off course, and contributing to the many long porch conversations at Pique HQ on Elm Street that somehow become part of the creative process themselves.
Readers may recognize the figure below from various AI-assisted cartoon remixes made for Music For End Times host Kevin Howley.
Kevin Howley “Music For End Times: Reflections on College Radio — From the Old School”
DePaul University Chicago, IL
[photographer’s note: taken quickly on a phone at a moment when pointing a camera at someone still felt slightly rude.]
Around the release of Blankets, Professor Howley and producer Joshua Ramon would regularly meet at The Bishop for drinks and conversation while the album was still taking shape.
What started as casual discussions about music and process gradually became part of a larger dialogue about workflow, cover songs, college radio, and the strange ways music histories continue to circulate through communities.
‘Blankets’ CDs printed and hand-delivered by Wayne at Rewind Records Friday morning before our departure!
Ramon described himself at ttimes as “staggering between self-doubt and believing there might’ve been a little bit of magic in the timing of the project from the beginning.”
Audrey Cullen —
“Art vs. Asset: Wu-Tang and the Contradictions of Musical Value”
In that sense, Blankets became more than a record. It also served as a reflection on folk traditions, popular music history, and the accessibility of modern recording tools — especially in public spaces that people may overlook.
Bloomington’s public library, for example, has recording studio resources available on Kirkwood Avenue — the kind of thing that still feels surprising until you realize how many opportunities for making and sharing art already exist quietly in everyday places.
Maybe that’s part of the larger point: the barriers to creating meaningful work are often smaller than they appear.
The conference itself was said to be,”Much less stuffy and redundant that a lot of conferences where often experts on the same subject gather to talk it and leave wondering what we really accomplished”, according Pope. “Pope’s don’t preach, but they do specialize in redundancy’s” Ramon insisted, followed by “Chicago, I say, just as the Terminator would make good on their word to return, we’ll be back!”, “… leaving after that depends maybe on how well we take to salsa dancing, and whether or not DePaul needs “a couple of white guys… ?” - Ed Hayne’s (highly recommend)
The case study was published in the ‘26 Conference book and can be purchased with select papers from the speeches below! Fine work to all the presenters, and thanks for the mutual interest! #PiqueXDepaul
8:30 a.m
Conference registration opens. 1st floor lobby.
Sale to benefit Freedom of the Press Foundation - 8th floor lobby.
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Vendor Hall opens. First floor, room 150
A1. Identity, Gender, and the Self
Josh Friedberg - “On Dancing While White, Gay, and Disabled–and the Perfect Remix for Me,”
Marine Lambolez - “Pop Concerts as Third Places for Feminine and Queer Joy”
Claire Nistler - “Free to Be Complicated: Free to Be…You and Me, Children’s Understanding of Gender Complexities, and Contradictions in Audience Reception”
Olivia Marr - “’Kiss Me Quick and Go!’ Romance, Courtship, and Kissing in 19th & 20th Century Popular Sheet Music”
Lando C. Tosaya - “From Silence to Spotlight: Queer Visibility from the HIV/AIDS Crisis to the Commodification of Queerness in Contemporary Pop Culture“
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
A2. Protest and Politics
Steve Clairmont - “Protest Music in the Time of Trump”
Bradley Morgan - “Frank Zappa’s America”
Rosa Eberly - “Sampling Harry Shearer”
Allison Broesder - “The Unheeded Warning: How Year Zero Predicted the Rise of American Authoritarianism “
10:15 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
B1. Reading K-Pop
Abby Kirby - “K-Pop Demon Hunter and Fans as Commodity”
Lauren O'Connor - “California (Teenage) Dreamin’ with K-Pop's BoyNextDoor”
Lisa Rothman - “‘This Is What It Sounds Like’: The Power of Vulnerability in Fighting Our ‘Demons’ and Becoming Our ‘Golden’ Selves”
Carrie Stern - “Dying Twice: BTS's "‘Black Swan’”
B2. Remix
Benjamin Penwell - “Pop Approaches to Metalcore Production”
Michael LaRocco - “The Bold and the Brutal-full: The “Extreme Pop" of Heavy Metal”
Owen Smith - “Perennially Pop: The Many Lives and Fortunes of the Carmina Burana”
Josh Ramon and Andrew Pope - “Echoes, Blankets, & Covers: Digital Reorchestration and Storytelling”
Michael Dando - “Remixing Hip Hop Comics: Cultural Intraction for Social Change”
B3. Audio Preservation
Joe Tessone & Mickey Cushing: "Music Legacies at Risk: How Artists, Studios, & Labels Can Preserve Their Recordings," Presented by Mystery Street Recording Company
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
C1. Keynote Speaker
Jim DeRogatis, professor, podcast host and author
Book sale/signing immediately following
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
D1. Music History and the Industry
Kevin Howley - “Music For End Times: Reflections on College Radio––From the Old School”
Audrey Cullen - “Art vs. Asset: Wu-Tang and the Contradictions of Musical Value”
Walter Podrazik - "You Can't Do That! (Sez Who?): Wrestling for Control of Creator Content on Modern Music Platforms"
Mark Reynolds - “A Dollar and A Dream: The Hidden History of Black Entrepreneurs in Music from Ragtime to Rap”
Dewitt King - “Play Reimagined: AI and the Disrupted Production of Black Creative Geographies”
D2. Reading Music in Fiction
Lori Rader-Day, Michelle Falkoff, and James DF Hannah
D3. Recording Studio: The Music Industry
Gravity Studio
2:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
E1. Keynote Speaker
Francesca Royster, professor and author
Book sale/signing immediately following
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
F1. Music and Meaning
Susan Hatters Friedman - “The Cure and Mental Health: From Robert Smith’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ to ‘A Letter to Elise’”
Kristin Noone - “Classic Rock, Christmas Carols, and Community: Book Playlists as Social Paratexts”
Michael Denslow - “And We Know We Shall Win: Remembering Sinead O’Connor, Who Was Right About Everything”
Abdul-Malik Ryan - “Crossing the Divide: Islam, Conversion, and the Sacred/Secular in Pop Music”
F2. Music Fandom
Olivia Sadler - “TikTok and The Lived Experience of Concerts”
Danielle Momoh - “’she needed her own edit moment.’: Fan Labor, Intense Clutter and Other Sources of Contemporary Video Edits’ Disruptive Affects”
Macaila Britton - “Discussing Taylor Swift”
Carey Millsap-Spears - “Fan for Life: 50 Years of U2”
Rimon-Hadassah Walker - “What Do You Do With a Dead Space Pirate?: Post-Object Fandom of the Mechanisms”
F3. Genre Boundaries and Crossings
Rob Levy - “Pet Shop Boys and the Limitless Power of Pop”
Karma Waltonen & Denise Du Vernay - “Dare to be Stupid: The Keys to Weird Al’s Success”
Anton Dubois - “Nostalgia and Reinvention in blink-182’s California”
Morgan McFadden - “How Pink Pantheress Remixed the Pop Star Blueprint”
4:45 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.
G1. Music in Movies and Theatre
Rosa Eberly - “The Logic of “This Is Spinal Tap” is Real”
Lindsay Thobe - “The Films of John Carney and Making Music That Tells a Story”
Tom Ue - “The Tentativeness of Hue Park’s and Will Aronson’s Maybe Happy Ending”
Sasha Young* - “Divas, Dames, and the Damned: The Competitive Nature of Musical Theatre”
Kristofer Starzomski* - “To Light Our Darkest Hour: The Persistent and Emotional Power of 1980s Synth in The Transformers: The Movie (1986) Soundtrack”
William Bonfiglio* - “‘Draw Me Like One of Your French (Canadian) Girls’: Remixing Céline Dion into Contemporary Musical Theatre”
G2. Fan Vidding
Samantha Close & Anne Collins Smith, Maestras
