
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #06: Challenges (Season 1 Finale)
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #05: Mental Health. Hosts Dana Bollen and Andrew Mall are joined by ten of our Season 1 panel members to discuss some of the biggest changes that we've experienced within the DIY music scenes over the last few decades & the challenges that we face today. Several panelists also share advice that is valuable to anyone who is involved in these communities.

Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #05: Mental Health
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #05: Mental Health. Hosts Dana Bollen and Andrew Mall are joined by nine of our Season 1 panel members to discuss the mental health benefits that we gain through being involved in DIY music scenes and communities.

Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #04: Community
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #04: Community. Hosts Dana Bollen and Andrew Mall are joined by eight of our Season 1 panel members to discuss the communities that we build around D.I.Y. music scenes, as well as values that are essential within these communities.

Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #03: Exposure
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #03: Exposure. Hosts Dana Bollen and Andrew Mall are joined by nine of our Season 1 panel members to discuss the impact that exposure can have on D.I.Y. music scenes and what happens when these bands and this music reaches mainstream attention and success.

Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #02: Sustainability and Resilience
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #02: Sustainability and Resilience. hosts Dana Bollen and Andrew Mall are joined by eight of our Season 1 panel members to discuss factors that impact the sustainability and resilience in D.I.Y. music scenes, as well as the importance of adaptability in a society that is constantly changing and evolving.

Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #01: Pilot
Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #01: Pilot. Hosts Dana Bollen and Andrew Mall introduce themselves and the panel of twelve individuals that we will hear from throughout Season 1 of this podcast series. Each panel member also chimes in to describe their personal connection to the term “D.I.Y.” (do-it-yourself) and its connection to their experiences in the D.I.Y. music scenes and communities.

Hardcore Community at Furnace Fest: Nostalgia, Belongingness, and Vulnerability
Punk Scholars Network conference presentation (2025). In this paper I reflect on the meaningfulness of the Furnace Fest community to individual participants. My findings are based on four sequential years of fieldwork at Furnace Fest (2021–24) with ever-growing research teams, hundreds of survey responses, and dozens of hours of semi-structured interviews with organizers, community members, and random attendees (around 50 conducted at the 2024 event alone). I argue that nostalgia at Furnace Fest is generative as much as it is reflective, affirming participants’ identities while also empowering them to take risks and be vulnerably transparent in relative safety.
Punk Rock
Punk rock is simultaneously a music genre and a lifestyle, an attitude and a philosophy, a political orientation and a commodified fashion. Insiders, outsiders, in-betweeners—everyone’s perspective on punk is different, distinct, and necessarily individuated. Punk is what you make of it, yes—but it also has rules, boundaries, and its own self-appointed border police: punk is always already what others make of it. In this course, we explore the ideological, musical, and social characteristics of punk rock, its precedents, and its descendants.

DIY Music Survey
Are you involved in DIY music? If so, please consider completing my survey about participants’ histories and experiences with DIY music scenes.

Hardcore Nostalgia at Furnace Fest
MEIEA conference presentation (2024). What is the nature of hardcore, and how does hardcore nostalgia reflect its values and meet its needs? More than merely a marketing ploy, is hardcore nostalgia also an invitation to revisit and romanticize the anxieties of our youth; an attempt at a do-over; or perhaps even an act of emotional and mental self-care? In this presentation, we trace these trends in hardcore and emo to ask: what do we do with nostalgia that asks us to remember when we were young and angry and sad?

Mosh Pit Methods: Team-based Collaborative Fieldwork at a Hardcore Punk Festival
SEM conference presentation (2023). In this paper, we address the complexities of collaborating at these multiple levels: with each other, research assistants, festival organizers and staff, community leaders and members, and festival attendees. In attending to these challenges and opportunities, we open a conversation about the power and potential of team-based, collaborative fieldwork.

Review of Anthology of Emo (2 vols.) and Washed Up Emo (podcast)
Punk & Post-Punk (2021). In this review of Tom Mullen's Anthology of Emo (2 vols.) and Washed Up Emo (podcast), I explain how Mullen has contributed to a long trajectory of emo’s and reputational recovery. He is key to emo nostalgia in the 2010s and its resurgence and flourishing into the 2020s.

“Lift Each Other Up”: Punk, Politics, and Secularization at Christian Festivals
IASPM-US conference presentation (2021). When the members of Flatfoot 56, a Celtic punk band from Chicago, speak of “brotherhood” at AudioFeed, a Christian music festival, they refer to congregational cohesion; at a secular punk venue, however, scene unity is just as likely an interpretation. Whereas Christian punks sacralize secular places, such as the bars and nightclubs where they often perform, this paper suggests that bands like Flatfoot 56 might be thought to secularize sacred places (i.e., Christian festivals) by decentering U.S. evangelicalism’s most controversial public positions. Through an ethnographic analysis of Flatfoot 56 performances, considering what is sung/spoken aloud and what is not, this paper argues for a nuanced, mediating perspective that recognizes an ambivalence about identity politics among many evangelical subculturalists moving between secular and sacred spaces.

“Lift Each Other Up”: Punk, Politics, and Secularization at Christian Festivals
Christian Punk, Bloomsbury (2020). This chapter focuses on the Chicago-based Christian Celtic-punk band Flatfoot 56, analyzing their performances in secular venues and at the Christian music festivals Cornerstone and AudioFeed. Arguing that Christianity and punk are inseparable to the band’s identity, the chapter analyzes their approach to religious communication in songs and from the stage. The chapter also addresses the evolution of Christian music festivals and the tensions around youth-focused niche forms of Christian music, such as punk.
What Would the Community Think: Communal Values in Independent Music
voiceXchange (2006). An enthusiastic post on a website, a supportive audience in a smoky club, an animated conversation at a local music store—every interaction between fans of independent music binds them in a community. This paper presents my initial research into the ways in which the independent music community’s boundaries and values are expressed and shared in evolving social networks by means of interactions that authenticate participants into this community.
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