School of Music

WNBQ Talks About Pop Muzik 2026

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The WNBQ (Women, Non-Binary & Trans, and Queer) Music Festival was founded in 2022 through a collaborative class project organizing a concert celebrating underrepresented voices on our campus. Since then, we have continued to schedule additional events, including annual student and faculty concerts, roundtable discussions, and guest speakers and performers. Our 2026 music festival centers around pop music, inviting artists, activists, scholars, and other new presenters to gather at Western Illinois University for our inaugural conference. This event is sponsored by IASPM-US, the Performing Arts Society (PAS), and the WIU School of Music.

To submit a paper proposal, please visit the Call For Papers submission form.

Additional information regarding accommodations, travel, and local attractions will be released in the coming weeks. Our conference has no registration fee, both speakers and other attendees can attend all events at no additional cost.

2026 Conference

Location: Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, USA
Dates: May 19-20, 2026
Deadline for Proposal Submissions: March 31, 2026

Proposal Submission Form

Or submit proposals (including a 300-word abstract, presenter names, and format of presentation) to wnbq@wiu.edu.

Popular music has long been a space where those with marginalized identities can express themselves freely and fully through their artistry, spanning beyond sonic communication into a realm of visual cues through their videos, performances, and fashion. Our committee selected themes of popular music in conjunction with marginalized identities of gender and sexuality to give young scholars in this area the opportunity to present their research to a like-minded audience and facilitate community building within the field. We imagine this conference as a space where we can discuss the issues facing these communities while also celebrating and amplifying the joy in these identities.

For the inaugural 2026 WNBQ conference, we invite papers discussing the intricate connections identity has on the creation, consumption, and proliferation of popular music with special regard to marginalized identities. We are interested in presentations that uplift the creations of women, non-binary, trans, and queer artists and pieces that engage music with gender and sexuality studies.

The committee welcomes presentations that include (but are not limited to) the following themes:

  • Popular music related to current political events, both nationally and globally
  • Musical responses to increasing anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans legislation
  • Antiracism, Black Lives Matter, and accompanying movements
  • Employing feminist, race, and queer theories in music for application in classrooms, research, communities, and institutions
  • Music and expressions of masculinities
  • Reaching across borders, building bridges, finding commonalities, and honoring differences
  • Representations of queer joy, celebrations of identity, positive reflections on marginalized identity
  • Popular music and rural spaces, especially those pertaining to the Midwest and the West-Central Illinois region

We invite presenters from all backgrounds and fields - artists, activists, scholars at the beginning of their careers to submit proposals. Our conference welcomes all attendees, but focuses specifically on voices new to presenting their own research. We especially encourage and welcome proposals from presenters currently underrepresented in academia, including, but not limited to women, Black/African American, Indigenous, and People of Color, disabled individuals, and people from LGBTQ+ communities, as well as people of different ages, socio/economic classes, nationalities, and religions. We hope to begin building a community of like-minded music scholars to continue the conversations started at our conference beyond the dates of our event.

We are interested in a variety of formats for presentations:

  • Traditional individual paper presentations (20 minutes) - 300-word abstract
  • Creative sessions (including artist-scholar performances, demonstrations of creative process, or other long-form presentations) (60 minutes) - 300-word abstract
  • Panel presentations and roundtable discussions (90 minutes) - 300-word panel/roundtable abstract plus ~150-200-word abstracts from each speaker/participant
  • Workshop presentations (60 minutes) - 300-word abstract

You may direct questions to wnbq@wiu.edu.

Accommodations

Unforgettable Forgottonia Hotel Listings

or

Olson Conference Center
WIU Conference Services
1 University Circle
Macomb, IL 61455
Sally Adams: SA-Adams2@wiu.edu
Phone: (309) 298-2421
www.wiu.edu/student_success/occ/

Travel

Coming Soon

About Macomb

Coming Soon

Register

Coming Soon