Pretend We’re Dead will examine the emergence and disappearance of women in rock in the 90s and the ideological, attitudinal, and technological forces that allowed them to break into the mainstream but also bolstered their abrupt removal. This dissertation will be a radical feminist approach to understanding an historical moment that can help us better understand the mechanisms of control—institutional, ideological, psychic, and systemic—that continue to subjugate women in rock. It will be deeply anchored in the lived experiences of women in rock, told in their voices, and analyzed using an intersectional, Marxist feminist framework. The questions directing the dissertation are are: How did the narrator’s upbringings influence their pursuit of career in music; What were their musical and artistic influences; How did women form bands and navigate the independent music industry; How were women able to reach mainstream audiences in the 1990s; How did they subvert or conform to gender norms? How did they express their feminisms; What were the mechanisms, ideological, and attitudinal forces that disappeared them from rock radio and rock history? Pretend We’re Dead will argue for the radical potential of rock music history that is focused on feminist issues. By presenting a historical narrative that is aware of the distant past, attentive to continuities over time, and alert to the workings of patriarchal power, it invites readers to reconsider the struggles of the twenty-first century.