The Billy Joel Symposium is over! I was LIVE (unbelievable, I know) and IN PERSON at this event with my longtime colleague, Kristen J. Nyitray. I love that the conference program put my Caw doodle in.
For the program/website, I submitted Caw poses as the cover of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” album since our talk was about his song “Vienna.”
Our research, “Slow down, you crazy child”: Gen Z’s Affective Archive of Billy Joel’s “Vienna,” focused on Gen Z’s self-archiving of the song “Vienna” through social media, and our central argument was that Gen Zers’ posts demonstrate that archives matter to them, and they function as a form of self-preservation.
Our talk was full of Gen Zer memes/comments/screenshots of TikToks and Instagrams. Some of my favorite parts of doing data work is being able to use social media as references.
So during the talk we read post comments like: “Idk if Billy Joel knew when he was writing his songs that they would speak to a whole generation of women during a global pandemic but we all need to thank him” and “When you’re feeling mediocre and have to remember you’re 20 and put this banger on.”
We got a lot of laughs from all generations who attended and this talk felt fun.
Now to publish our research! I’m excited to see emojis printed in an academic journal.