I am a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music at Duke University. My research examines authoritarian governance, memory, and political subjectivity in (post-)COVID urban China music and sound. Trained at Swarthmore College in Asian Studies and Music, I approach teaching from a liberal arts perspective that values human connection, interdisciplinary inquiry, and civic responsibility.
Geographically, my teaching focuses on music cultures of East Asia, Asian America, and the global Asian diaspora. Thematically, I address music and nationhood, colonialism, migration, identity, sonic infrastructure, and digital and popular culture. Across historical, ethnographic, and analytical approaches, I treat sound as an active force shaping social relations and power. I have taught as Instructor of Record, teaching assistant, and guest lecturer in large surveys, skills-based classrooms, and interdisciplinary seminars across Music, Global China Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and Media and Cinema Studies. My central commitment is to equip students with analytical listening skills while encouraging them to question how musical knowledge is organized, circulated, and authorized.
In Spring 2026, I served as Instructor of Record for Introduction to Music Theory, a non-major course comparable to AP Music Theory. Having struggled with a Western-centric, composition-oritented curriculum in my own training, I saw this course as an opportunity to re-orient music theory education towards understanding broader human experiences. Drawing upon conversations with recipients of the Society for Music Theory’s “Diversity in Course Design” Award (A5), I redesigned (link syllabus) the department’s default syllabus to foreground global musical practices while maintaining analytical rigor (A1). I structured the course around four conceptual units: Musical Parameters and Notation Practices; Categorizing and Hierarchizing Pitches; Musical Togetherness; and Form. Each unit introduces a broad analytical question through multiple traditions before presenting Western tonal theory as one case study. This comparative structure helps students connect theoretical concepts to prior listening experience and encounter music theory as culturally situated rather than universal.
For example, when teaching musical time, I introduced the clave as it appears in Motown, son cubano, and contemporary pop. Through listening, movement, and creative transcription exercises (link student homework), students compared embodied rhythmic experience with the limits of Western staff notation. These exercises encouraged critical reflection on how notation systems privilege certain parameters while obscuring others (K3). In redesigning the course, I aimed to respond to shifting student demographics and disciplinary conversations about decolonizing curricula (V4).
My classroom practice translates these design commitments into inclusive learning environments (A2). At the start of each semester, I administer an entry survey to assess students’ training, musical interests, and goals. This allows me to calibrate pacing and explanation so that students with uneven preparation can participate meaningfully (V1, K1).
To promote engagement and equitable participation, I incorporate music students already listen to and invite them to apply analytical terminology to those selections (V2). Optional projects allow students to analyze a piece of their choice, positioning them as contributors rather than passive recipients (A2). These assignments bridge disciplinary vocabulary with lived listening practice and reinforce learning through application (K2).
I also invite students to share the notation systems they use—tablature, jianzipu, lead sheets, or digital audio workstations. By placing these side by side, we discuss how each reflects particular aesthetic priorities, instrument technologies, and musical communities (V4). These conversations foster a collaborative classroom culture where difference becomes an analytical resource (V2) while validating students’ diverse musical backgrounds (V1).
Looking forward, I aim to develop courses more fully aligned with ethnomusicology and sound studies. My seminar Soundtracks of Chinese Modernity examines modern China through sound as both cultural practice and media infrastructure (A1, K2). Moving beyond musical works alone, the course integrates national language standardization, phonographic realism, socialist loudspeaker systems, and other media technologies into the study of music (V3, V4, K1). Students learn to treat sound not merely as aesthetic object but as historically embedded force shaping political subjectivity.
The course also integrates rigorous academic reading and writing into disciplinary training. Through structured article reviews and peer responses, students practice identifying arguments, evaluating methods, and situating scholarship within broader debates (A2, K3). I treat academic literacy as central to ethnomusicological method: describing listening ethnographically and critiquing modernity require clarity, reflexivity, and argumentative precision (V3).
Assignments such as ethnographic concert reviews and a collaborative final exhibition scaffold increasingly sophisticated analytical and writing competencies (K5) while encouraging synthesis of theory, history, and lived listening (V2). I continue refining the course by integrating digital tools for collaborative listening and exhibition design (K4) and connecting regional case studies to global conversations about colonialism and media modernity (V4).
Across course design, classroom practice, and future development, my teaching is guided by three commitments: intellectual rigor, equity of participation, and reflexive inquiry. Whether redesigning music theory or developing ethnomusicology seminars, I begin from how learners build understanding in context (K1) and design assignments that scaffold analytical growth (A1). In the classroom, I cultivate environments where students’ diverse musical experiences become resources for collective learning (V1, V2). Through continual reflection and engagement with pedagogical scholarship (A5, V3), I refine my practice in response to students and institutional change. Ultimately, I want students to leave my courses not only with disciplinary knowledge, but with sharpened listening, careful reading habits, and the confidence to interrogate how sound shapes modern social life.