Conference Theme

​This year’s theme, “Mayhem: Pop Music and Writing in Perilous Times,” draws inspiration from the title of Lady Gaga’s recent album, while turning toward a larger cultural reckoning. Mayhem captures the turbulence that defines the present moment: technological upheaval, political volatility, media precarity, and seismic shifts in the making, ownership and consumption of music. That turbulence hurtles us to the brink, a charged space of instability and uncertainty that gives rise to new forms and new possibilities. Pop music has always flourished at the brink. In periods of disruption and collapse, artists, writers, and critics alike have transformed crisis into sound, language, and community.