Select Research Events & Speaking Engagements
Public Guest Lecture: Emory University
Jessica Holmes: “Girlhood, Trauma, and Healing in the Musical Vernacular of Depression: A Close Reading of Princess Nokia’s GIRLS”
Emory University - Hosted by the Department of Music and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture - April 16, 2026
Organized by Daniel Castro Pantoja
Keynote Lecture: Georgia College & State University
Jessica A. Holmes, ”Billie Eilish, Princess Nokia, Girlhood, and Race in the Musical Vernacular of Depression”
Georgia College & State University - April 15 2026
Women’s and Gender Studies Annual Symposium
Organized by Dana Gorzleany- Mostak
Paper Presentation on 2026 PopCon Panel: "Female Pop as Heteropessimistic Complaint”
Jessica Holmes: “Girlhood, Trauma, and Healing in Princess Nokia’s GIRLS”
Dan DiPiero: “Sabrina Carpenter’s Tragic Heterosexuality”
Ajitpaul Mangat: “‘The War on Love’: Mariah the Scientist, Black Feminism, and Living with Loss”
Amy Skjerseth: “The ‘Be My Baby’ Beat: Heteropessimistic Soundtracks from Dirty Dancing and Lost in Translation to Lyyke Li and Japanese Breakfast”
Hosted by the University of Southern California Thorton School of Music - Sat Mar 14, 2026
Public Guest Lecture: University of Oxford
Jessica A. Holmes, ”Billie Eilish, Princess Nokia, and the Musical Vernacular of Depression”
University of Oxford, Faculty of Music - March 5 2026
Hosted by the Faculty of Music Public Seminar Series organized by Emma Arthur and Jessica Edgar
Paper Presentation: Quiet Relations: A Sound Studies Symposium on the Silent, the Quiet, and the Not-Listening
Jessica A. Holmes, “Christine Sun Kim’s Ethos of Quiet Refusal”
Duke University - October 20-21, 2025
“Quiet Relations gathers eighteen scholars from across ethnomusicology, musicology, anthropology, and Deaf Studies to ask: in a time saturated by metaphors of empowering voices and the unjust silences, how might we listen to and for the quiet beyond binaries of sound and silence? What otherwise modes of relations might be enabled and sustained quietly? These eighteen scholars are, incidentally, chapter authors and co-editors of a book in the making called Quiet Relations: A Minor Volume (under contract with Duke UP).”
Public Guest Lecture: Aarhus University
Aarhus University - October 13, 2025
Department of Culture and Communication
Hosted by the Art, Aesthetics and Communities research programme, and organized by Niclas Nørby Jochumsen Hundahl.
Depression in Popular Music International Conference
Jessica A. Holmes, organizer & co-host
Sorbonne University - June 26-27, 2025
An interdisciplinary international conference held at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. Organized and funded in connection with my Spring 2025 Visiting Professorship at the Sorbonne Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology & Public Health through the 4EU+ European University Alliance.
Visit the conference website for the CfP, program, abstracts, bios, and conference booklet.
Public Lecture: Jack Halberstam, “Unworlding: Anarchictecture after Everything”
University of Copenhagen - March 4, 2025
An event co-hosted by the University of Copenhagen Art & Health and Art & Earth Research Clusters, in collaboration with the UCPH Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Difference.
Public Lecture by Tami Gadir & Kyle Devine
November 1, 2024 - An event organized and hosted on behalf of the UCPH Musicology Division.
Public Lecture by Ann Powers & Eric Weisbard
October 6, 2023 - An event organized and hosted on behalf of the UCPH Musicology Division.
Invited Research Lecture
Jessica A. Holmes, “Music at the Margins of Sense: From the Figure of Deafness to Expert Listening”
Hong Kong Baptist University - March 15, 2023
Delivered online in the Department of Humanities & Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. An event organized and hosted by Dr. Francois Mouillot.
Invited Research Lecture
Jessica A. Holmes, “The Representation of Depression and Gender in the Music and Reception of American Pop Singer Billie Eilish”
American University of Beirut - November 21, 2022
Delivered as part of an Erasmus+ Faculty Fellowship in the Department of Fine Arts & Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB Lebanon) in November 2022.
Public Book Talk: Jonathan Sterne, Diminished Faculties
University of Copenhagen - May 10, 2022
Organized and hosted on behalf of the UCPH Art & Health Research Cluster.
Public Lecture: Jonathan Sterne, “On Cultures of Loudness and the Normalization of Altered Hearing”
UCLA - January 22, 2019
Organized and hosted in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Musical Humanities
Distinguished Lecture
Jessica A. Holmes, “Un-Disciplining Musicology?: Music, Disability, and Deafness”
UCLA - January 25, 2018
Delivered as part of a panel alongside presentations by Robert Fink, Uri McMillan, Beth Levy, and Stephan Pennington in the UCLA Musicology Department’s Distinguished Lecture series.
Invited Research Talk:
Jessica Holmes, “Between Sign Language and Sound: Music and Deaf Culture in the Work of Christine Sun Kim”
UCLA - January 13, 2018
Delivered as part of an invited research panel entitled, “Illegible Literary Audiation” alongside presentations by Roshanak Kheshti and Nina Eidsheim. An event organized and hosted by the University of California Humanities Research Institute’s “Counter-Production: Noise as Critical Research” graduate student working group.