Shows
cry baby pod7 | Big Feelings Special with Raechel Anne JolieShow NotesFor this special episode I’m sharing my conversation with Raechel Anne Jolie, who joined me to discuss Big Feelings back in October. If you’re a regular reader of cry baby, you’ll already know that Raechel is one of my favorite writers and people period; their award-winning memoir Rust Belt Femme and popular newsletter radical love letters are both required reading (so get on it). 😊This event was such a massive joy for me and I’m so glad I remembered to hit “record”—even if it was just on my phone. Timestamps
2025-12-081h 07
cry baby pod6 | Resilient Pop and Alt (Right) Rock with Dr. Robin JamesShow NotesOn this episode I speak with with the one and only Robin James, scholar, editor, author of five books so far, including several we talk about today—like The Future of Rock and Roll, The Sonic Episteme, as well as the forthcoming Good Vibes Only, 33 ⅓ on book The Breeders’ Last Splash and a second edition of Resilience and Melancholy, under contract with the University of Michigan Press. We take the temperature of the rock/pop divide, covering what’s happened to resilience discourse in pop music over the past decade, what’s happening to the notion of...
2025-11-231h 01
cry baby pod5 | Indie Rock and Girl Cultures with Dr. Morgan BimmShow NotesToday’s ultra special guest is Dr. Morgan Bimm, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish NS and very dear friend. We talk about her dissertation on indie rock and girl cultures; her new project on playlists-as-method; the work of making friends in academia; and moooorrreeee. Timestamps0:00 intro4:00 dissertation project and origin stories29:00 playlists and citational politics45:30 low culture and pedagogy53:30 how we met :’) 1:06: what’s making guest cry-Music...
2025-11-101h 16
cry baby pod4 | Authorship—>Ownership with Dr. Patrick NicklesonShow NotesFor the second episode in our unofficial “uhh is this even popular music” series, I speak with Dr. Patrick Nickleson about (early) minimalism, the damage musicology can do, and music’s role in consolidating property relations via copyright law—among other things! Patrick’s first book is The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music, and Historiography in Dispute (University of Michigan Press, 2023). He is also the editor of Tony Conrad’s What Music Did: The Story of Numerocracy in the West (University of Michigan Press, 2026).Show TimelineIntro 0:00Authorship...
2025-10-271h 02
cry baby pod3 | Hardcore Softie with Dr. Evan Martin-CaslerShow NotesOn this episode my guest is Dr. Evan Martin-Casler, a Lecturer of Business Communication at the University of Arizona and lifelong punk practitioner. I asked him to share their expertise on all matters of contemporary hardcore, as well as to walk listeners through his analysis of metal subgenres like doom and sludge. Along the way we cover moshing, the disappearance of subcultures, friction as a counterweight to neoliberal acceleration, and the critical importance of—and desperation for—tenderness in our working lives. Finally, check out the book Evan's contributing to—What's Left of Metal? —coming out in f...
2025-10-131h 11
cry baby pod2 | Jazz Is Dead with Dr. AJ KluthShow NotesI talk with Dr. AJ Kluth about the vibrant LA jazz scene, the Jazz is Dead phenomenon, and how this music helps us think about—and calls into question—the distinction between “jazz” and “popular music.” Timestamps00: Intro5:00: Jazz is Dead and White Zombie, Dr. Kluth’s book project7:06: Musical genre in the scene14:00 Race, necropolitics, genre play20:30: Historical precedents for the sentiment that jazz is dead29:00 Poetics of relation, ethics of jazz, and creolization 33:25: Methods and background
2025-09-2949 min
cry baby pod1 | Music and the Media with Dr. Alyx VeseyDr. Alyx Vesey stops by to chat about her training in media studies, her life in popular music, and her two major monograph projects, one on feminized music merchandise and another on the history VH1. We talk about what it means to study popular music from a media perspective, how books are like houses, and how to research a TV show that no one seems to remember. :,)Alyx’s book is Extending Play: The Feminization of Collaborative Music Merchandise in the Early Twenty-First CenturySensitive Topics: gender-based harassment; death of a par...
2025-09-151h 09
cry baby podPilotHey pals, I’m doing this on my own so will you let me know if the levels sound shit thank yoouuuu :,) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com
2025-08-0101 min
New Books in Performing ArtsDan DiPiero, "Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life" (U Michigan Press, 2022)Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a f...
2023-02-271h 25
University of Michigan Press PodcastDan DiPiero, "Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life" (U Michigan Press, 2022)Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a f...
2023-02-271h 24
New Books in MusicDan DiPiero, "Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life" (U Michigan Press, 2022)Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a f...
2023-02-271h 24
New Books in AnthropologyDan DiPiero, "Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life" (U Michigan Press, 2022)Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a f...
2023-02-271h 25
Her Music AcademiaImprovisation Studies (with Dr. Dan DiPiero)In this episode, I chat with Dr. Dan DiPiero (Ithaca College) about his background as a jazz drummer, his experiences studying comparative studies, and his new book Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (out now and available open access through the University of Michigan Press!).
Dan's book
Dan's lecture on YouTube
Get in touch with me at: hermusicacademia@gmail.com
2022-09-061h 03
The Intellectual8 | Opera and Society with Dr. Nick Stevens Podcast: Public Cultural StudiesEpisode: 8 | Opera and Society with Dr. Nick StevensPub date: 2022-05-01Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationOn this episode I'm talking with Dr. Nick Stevens about the intersections of opera and society in various historical moments—up to and including the present day. Nick is a musicologist (ecommerce production associate) for ArkivMusic, who has also taught most recently as the Visiting Assistant Professor in Musicology at the Wichita State University School of Music. His monograph, Crisis Mode: Opera as Form...
2022-05-111h 08
Public Cultural Studies8 | Opera and Society with Dr. Nick StevensOn this episode I'm talking with Dr. Nick Stevens about the intersections of opera and society in various historical moments—up to and including the present day. Nick is a musicologist (ecommerce production associate) for ArkivMusic, who has also taught most recently as the Visiting Assistant Professor in Musicology at the Wichita State University School of Music. His monograph, Crisis Mode: Opera as Form and Medium After the End of History, is under contract and due out within the next couple of years. On this show we discuss the "undoing of women" in traditional opera genres, the status of co...
2022-05-011h 08Public Cultural Studies7 | Indigeneity On The Move with Dr. Yuridia RamírezOn this episode my guest is Dr. Yuridia Ramírez, a Ford Foundation Fellow and Assistant Professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ramírez earned her PhD in history from Duke University with a certificate in Latin American Studies. She also holds a BA in history and journalism from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and an MA in history from Duke University. Our conversation today covers topics related to Dr. Ramírez' current book project, tentatively titled Indigeneity on the Move: Transborder Politics from Michoacán to North Carolina, a historic and interdisciplinary analysis of a di...
2022-04-0142 minPublic Cultural Studies6 | Becoming HIV-Negative, with Dr. Nic FloresPre-exposure prophylaxis or PreP treatments are lifesaving drugs that can reduce the risk of HIV infection from sex by about 99%. Yet, in an era where a once-daily pill can prevent one of the most damaging diseases we know, decades old inequalities in our healthcare and social systems render these treatments less accessible for minoritized subjects, the very same demographic groups who are statistically at higher risk. On episode 6 I talk with my friend and colleague Dr. Nic Flores about his book project, tentatively titled, Becoming HIV-Negative: Queer of Color Community Organizing and Responses to HIV Prevention. We talk about h...
2022-02-0158 minPublic Cultural Studies5 | Whose History? With Dr. Maria HarveyMy guest for this episode is Dr. Maria Harvey, Visiting Assistant Professor and Research Coordinator for the Madison Art Collection in the Department of History of Art at James Madison University. We discuss minoritized perspectives in the field of art history, what it means to "decolonize" our curricula, as well as academic labor strikes in the era of the corporate university.
Dr. Harvey recently published an article that articulates her perspective on these issues using her expertise in southern Italian art.
Maria Harvey, "Interrogating remains, destroying the past: art history and heritage conservation in southern Italy", I...
2022-01-0159 minPublic Cultural Studies4 | Rust Belt Femme with Dr. Raechel Anne JolieOn this episode my guest is Dr. Raechel Anne Jolie, author of the critically-acclaimed memoir Rust Belt Femme, which was the winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction, an NPR Favorite Book of 2020, and a runner-up for the Heartland Bookseller’s Award. Our conversation centers around this book, but also branches into feminist and queer theory, political activism, the complicated ways that identity categories intersect, the role that music plays in politics and identity construction, contemporary witchcraft practices, and MORE (really!).
Jolie’s work explores radical social movements, theories of and toward liberation, queerness, clas...
2021-12-0157 minPublic Cultural Studies3 | Embodied Technologies with Dr. Rebecca GibsonOn this episode Dr. Rebecca Gibson discusses corsets, skeletons, robots, Blade Runner, and more, while at the same time linking these apparently unrelated topics together through her methodology. Among other questions, Dr. Gibson's work asks what we can learn about gender and agency by bringing bioarcheological research on the effects of corseting into conversation with women's own words about the practice.
Rebecca Gibson is an independent scholar, whose published works include “Desire in the Age of Robots and AI: An Investigation in Science Fiction and Fact” (Palgrave Macmillan 2019), “The Corseted Skeleton: A Bioarchaeology of Binding” (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), and "Gen...
2021-11-0147 minPublic Cultural Studies2 | Migration and Testimony with Dr. Eleanor PaynterOn this episode I speak with Dr. Eleanor Paynter about her work in Critical Refugee Studies, including a recent essay on soundwalking, as well as her role as a Migrations Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. Dr. Paynter's work focuses on testimony as a multifaceted object: a legalistic framework for migrants seeking refugee status, as well as a mode of expressing agency in creative ways. In this conversation we touch on the so-called "refugee crisis" in Europe, as well as poetry, interdisciplinarity, public scholarship, and more.
Eleanor Paynter is part of the Einaudi Center's Migrations research team, building...
2021-09-3054 minPublic Cultural Studies1: Sonic Femmeness with Christine CapetolaIn this episode I talk with Dr. Christine Capetola about her current book project, Sonic Femmeness: Black Culture Makers, Felt History, and Vibrational Identity. We also discuss different methods of doing music research, as well as critical race theory, affect, and more.
Here are some links we mentioned in the show:
Capetola, Lana Del Rey, Fragile Feminism, and White Fragility in a Moment of Black Lives Matter
Capetola, “Gimme a Beat!”: Janet Jackson, Hyperaurality, and Affective Feminism
Capetola, Dawn Richard’s Second Line: An Electro Revival celebrates New Orleans and Black musical culture
Marina Peterson, Atmospheric Noise...
2021-09-0154 min
Public Cultural Studies0: TrailerIn this trailer I preview the upcoming season of interviews, and I also read a paragraph from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney's All Incomplete (Minor Compositions, 2021).
Check out our website for more info about the show, and please do get in touch with any feedback!
2021-08-1108 min
Sound It OutEpisode #75 – Epistemology Series – Contingency and Everyday ImprovisationImprovisation can become invisible since it is such a big part of everyday life. In this episode, graduate student Dan DiPiero presents the thesis that social and musical improvisation share a common structure, which is an engagement with contingency. Sound It Out airs on CFRU in Guelph on Tuesdays at 5pm. New episodes usually appear on a fortnightly … Continue reading Episode #75 – Epistemology Series – Contingency and Everyday Improvisation →
2018-05-0900 min