USND at Hoople
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The University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople is a fictional university that serves as the home institution for "Professor" Peter Schickele, where he is "renowned" as the greatest expert on the life and works of the (similarly "renowned") fictional composer P. D. Q. Bach and serves as a professor in the Musicolology and Musical Pathology departments.
The university is part of Schickele's incredibly elaborate fictional tableau, but it is probably not exactly a practical joke since the humor is rather broad and unlikely to be taken with extreme seriousness by a careful observer.
The name of the institution is fictional at another level: Hoople, although a real town, is actually located in northeastern North Dakota, not southern North Dakota as the institution's name suggests. It is to Hoople, North Dakota, that Professor Schickele returns "bach" from his research journeys.
"Professor" Schickele has mentioned the institution in the spoken introductions on many albums of P. D. Q.'s music. It figures most prominently on the P. D. Q. Bach On The Air album, which purports to be a recording of a segment of the output of the university's radio station, WOOF.