Hety's Latest News
Hety's Latest News
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Hety had an incredibly busy summer in 2025! She kicked things off in Hong Kong, presenting her latest research at the Society for Hong Kong Studies Annual Conference. Her paper explored the HK–China co-produced television program "Infinity and Beyond," analyzing its mission to incorporate Cantopop into the broader history of Chinese popular music in an effort to construct a historical continuity that reinforces China’s cultural authority.
Next, she traveled to Nakhon Si Thammarat in Southern Thailand, where she conducted her first post-COVID fieldwork on Thai music education at the College of Dramatic Arts. This milestone marked the 10th year of her ethnographic engagement with Thai music education—a fitting celebration of a decade of research. She also submitted a paper, now under review, examining Thai music education, cultural preservation, and cryptocolonialism.
While in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Hety also presented at the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Biannual Conference. Her presentation focused on the posthumous performance of Hong Kong’s legendary Ka Kui Wong. She argued that despite technological mediation and reproduction, his voice continues to carry an aura. While aura is commonly believed to be anchored in the body, in his case, it is his voice that bears it. This study laid the groundwork for her broader research into death, posthumous performance, and sound, which she later developed in her pilot study with the late Teresa Teng (already presented in Boston!).
What’s next? In September, Hety will be presenting at the East Asian Pop Culture Conference hosted by the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/east-asian-pop-culture/. There, she will share her insights on the (un)transforming cross-industry relationship between Cantopop and Hong Kong’s television industry.
Hety was selected as one of only ten early-career researchers to join the Emerging Scholars Program, hosted by the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University!
As part of the program, she received funding to present her latest work at the Posthuman Pop Symposium at Boston University in October 2024. Her presentation, titled "The failed posthumous calling: Teresa Teng and the listening culture in mainland China," examines the semi-AI performance of Teng in 2021 live broadcasting to mainland Chinese audiences via various platforms. By laying out the analog and digital eras of listening culture in the mainland, this paper argues the mainland Chinese audiences built an imperfect sonic persona (see Schulze, 2018) on Teng’s singing when she was alive and failed to recognize her voice in the posthumous performance. This paper demonstrates the importance of sound quality in posthumous performances.
This also showcases the preliminary findings of the pilot study for her second book project, which explores the creation and perception of digital realness/authenticity in posthumous live performances.
This opportunity also offers ongoing mentorship from leading scholars at Boston University as she continues to develop her research.
Stay tuned—the presentation video will be available soon on the Department's YouTube channel!
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