New Research in Asian and American Music
Speakers (alphabetically)
Nimrod Baranovitch (PhD 1997, Pitt) is a Senior Lecturer of Chinese Studies and the former Chair at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Haifa, Israel. His publications include China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978-1997 (University of California Press, 2003), articles in The Journal of Asian Studies, The China Quarterly, Modern China and The China Journal, and contributions to several edited volumes and encyclopedias.
Lei Ouyang Bryant (Ph.D. 2004 and M.A. in Ethnomusicology, University of Pittsburgh; B.A. in East Asian Studies, Macalester College) is an Assistant Professor of Music at Skidmore College. Her scholarly interests are in music, culture, and performance in East Asia (primarily China, Japan, and Taiwan) and Asian America. Her research examines issues of music and memory, identity, politics, race and ethnicity, popular culture, and social justice. Research projects include music and memory in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Race and Performance in Asian American musical theatre, and social justice and taiko drumming in the American Midwest. Bryant has published articles and reviews in ethnomusicology and Asian Studies journals including Asian Music, China Review, World of Music, and Ethnomusicology (forthcoming). Bryant currently serves as the President of the Association for Chinese Music Research and is an elected member of the Society for Ethnomusicology Council.
Nancy Guy (PhD 1996, Pitt) is an ethnomusicologist and an associate professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. Over her career, Guy's research interests have been primarily focused on theatrical performance, with political drama and music's role in political contestations falling within this purview. Currently, she is writing a book on the artistry and appeal of American opera singer Beverly Sills (1929-2007). Prior to her Sills work, Guy's research focused primarily on the musics of Taiwan and China. Her book Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan (University of Illinois Press, 2005) won the ASCAP Béla Bartók Award for Excellence in Ethnomusicology and it was also named an "Outstanding Academic Title for 2006" by Choice, the review magazine of the Association for College and Research Libraries.
Eun-Young Jung (PhD 2007, Pitt) is Assistant Professor of Integrative Studies at the University of California, San Diego. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, she served as the Assistant Director at the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research largely focuses on music and transnational dynamics in and from East Asia and music, media, race, and ethnicity in Asian American communities in the U.S. She is currently revising her dissertation, “Transnational Cultural Traffic in Northeast Asia,” into a book manuscript dealing with the Japanese influences on Korea’s pop music culture.
Kim Hee-sun earned the BA and MA from Seoul National University's Department of Korean Music and the Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004. She formerly served as a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and as a research fellow at the Asian Music Institute at the Seoul National University. Currently she is a professor of Korean studies at Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea. As a kayagŭm practitioner herself, she has given lectures, seminars, concerts and workshops on Korean music in the major cities and universities of Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. Currently she is actively participates in the globalization of Korean culture project. She has recently published her book Contemporary Kayagŭm Music in Korea: Tradition, Modernity and Identity, as well as chapters in many widely-circulated publications including Music of Korea (Korean Musicological Series 1) and Sanjo (Korean Musicological Series 3). Her recent translation books include Gugak Performance Program Guide, Contemporary Gayageum Notations for Composers, Korea Gayageum A Practical Guide, Korean Haegeum A Practical Guide, and more. She published numerous academic papers on Korean and Asian music and culture; her recent papers include “Asian Modernity, Politics and Identity of Modern Traditional Orchestras in Asia” “Imagining the Orient and the Embodiment of Modernity: Alan Hovhaness’s Symphony No.16 for the Kayagŭm and String Orchestra” “Discourses of Globalization and World Music-ization of Traditional Music in Contemporary South Korea” and more. In 2012, her papers will be published in journals in Australia and Europe. She is currently doing her fieldwork on world music in Korea and Asia, cultural translation of Korean music, gender issues in Korean music and K-pop musicals.
Lee Tong Soon teaches ethnomusicology at Emory University and received his doctoral degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1998. His research focuses on Southeast and East Asian musical cultures and his book, Chinese Street Opera in Singapore, is published by the University of Illinois Press (2009). In 2011, he was awarded a grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for his current research on Peranakan music in Singapore. He was the President of the Society for Asian Music (2007 -2011), a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2007-2009), and the Editor of the SEM Newsletter (1999-2006).
Da Lin is currently a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh. Da received her MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2010, and her BA in musicology from Xi’an Conservatory of Music (Xi’an, China) in 2005. She is working on a dissertation that investigates the politics and economics of Kunqu Opera, one of the oldest forms of Chinese Opera still performed today, in 21st century China. Other research interests include cultural studies approaches to music, as well as music and mediation.
Benjamin Pachter is an ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. His dissertation explores the development of contemporary taiko performance as a transnational musical entity and the manner in which its evolution has been influenced by performers’ evolving conceptions of tradition. In addition to his academic activities, Benjamin is also an active taiko performer; as a founding member of Pittsburgh Taiko, he conducted workshops and gave lecture/demonstrations at local schools in addition to participating in performances given across the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
Helen Rees studied Chinese music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the late 1980s and earned her Ph.D. in music from the University of Pittsburgh in 1994. She is now a professor of ethnomusicology and chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA. She was a founding member of CHIME (the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research) in 1990, 1st Vice-President of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 2003 to 2005, and the recipient of a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Scholar Grant over academic year 2004-2005. Her main research interests lie in traditional musics of southwest China, and in China's new fascination with intellectual property and intangible cultural heritage. She is the author of Echoes of History: Naxi Music in Modern China (2000) and editor of Lives in Chinese Music (2009). She has also been active in interpreting and presenting for Chinese musicians and scholars, most recently at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2007 and for a BBC Radio Three world music series in 2008.
Meng Ren, third year graduate student in ethnomusicology at Pitt, currently in his 9th year abroad since 2003. He previously studied in Ireland for six years and completed a BA Arts (German & Music) and MA Musicology (with a thesis concentrated on the “orientalism” in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde). Meng recently completed his MA thesis in Ethnomusicology on the flower songs of the Northwest China. His principle research interests lie in the Western concept of Chinese arts and culture, East Asian and Western vocal music traditions (folk songs, art songs, and operas etc.), cultural policies, Irish traditional music and Eurovision Song Contests.
Shuo Zhang is a Ph.D student in the Department of Music, University of Pittsburgh, and also a doctoral student at the Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University. His main research interest includes the cognitive and structural properties of music and language, particularly in auditory perception, acoustic analysis, and music/speech prosody. He has also been concerned with the recent developments of the Chinese contemporary instrumental music in the context of international artistic exchange. Currently Shuo is working as a Research Assistant for the Botswana Project (phonological sound system analysis for Setswana, an African Bantu language) at Georgetown University, funded by National Science Foundation.
Discussants
Joseph Lam is Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Michigan, Professor of Musicology and Former Chair of the Department, and Former Director of The Stearns Collection of Musical Instrument, in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, the University of Michigan. A musicologist and sinologist, Lam specializes in the musics and cultures of Southern Song (1127-1275), Ming (1368-1644), and contemporary China (1960s to present). Lam regularly lectures in the US , Mainland China, and Asia. His most recent publications include: “Music and Masculinities in Ming China” (Asian Music, 2011), and Songdai yinyueshi lunwenji: lilun yu miaoshu/Historical Studies on Song Dynasty Music: Theories and Narratives (Shanghai: Shanghai Conservatory of Music Press, 2012). Currently, he is working on a monograph entitled: Kunqu, the Classical Opera of Globalized China.
Amy Kuʻuleialoha Stillman is Professor of American Culture and Music, and Former Director of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, at the University of Michigan. She has published widely on music and dance in Hawaiʻi and Tahiti, and has also produced or co-produced CDs of Hawaiian music, two of which have received Grammy awards for Best Hawaiian Music Album of 2008 and 2010.
J. Lawrence Witzleben (PhD 1987, Pitt) studied ethnomusicology at the Universities of Hawai’i and Pittsburgh, Chinese music theory and performance at the Shanghai Conservatory, and Chinese and Javanese performance during fieldwork and teaching in Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, and Yogyakarta. He is the author of Silk and Bamboo Music in Shanghai: The Jiangnan Sizhu Instrumental Ensemble Tradition (Kent State, 1995), the co-editor of the East Asia volume of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music and Dance (Garland, 2002), and the current Editor of the journal Ethnomusicology. After teaching for nearly two decades at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he is now a Professor in the Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has also served as Director of the Center for East Asian Studies. His current research focuses on contemporary Chinese instrumental performance practice in Hong Kong, as part of a larger examination of repertoire, gender, presentation, media, and cross-cultural and intracultural fusion in Chinese instrumental music since the 1980s.
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