Shelley Zhang

Shelley Zhang is a researcher and musician whose work focuses on the intergenerational effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the transnational careers of Chinese musicians born and raised during the one-child policy. She grounds her work in extensive multi-sited fieldwork, with primary locations in China, Canada, and the United States. Her first project studies Chinese musicians of Western classical music and considers issues of socio-economic precarity, memory, trauma, racialization, and transpacific movement. She weighs the pressures some musicians face as they enter conservatories at young ages, with many ultimately leaving their hometowns and moving to North America, where they may become first generation Asian immigrants. In these circumstances, artistic endeavors are enmeshed with decisions regarding citizenship, family responsibility, and personal hope. Her research is the first to pursue this topic and has been supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council – Doctoral Fellowship, the Benjamin Franklin and Andrew W. Mellon Education Fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, the Wolf Humanities Center Graduate Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, the Association for Chinese Music Research of the Society for Ethnomusicology, and various other sources.

Publications:

• 2023. “Across the Pacific: The Strategic Citizenship of Chinese Musicians.” Ethnomusicology Forum 32, no. 2: 161-182. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2023.2230498.

• 2023. “Tourists of Their Own Past: Aural Palimpsests from the Mao Era.” Journal of Material Culture 28, no. 2: 221-245. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835221135404.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “Sinophone Diversities,” Panel Chair. "Closing Plenary: Paths Forward," Roundtable Speaker. East Asian Voices in Global Music Stories Symposium, Royal Holloway, University of London. August 2024

• “Conservatory Pathways and New Asian Americans: Immigration, Transnational Memory, and Music Education” Sound Check! A Festival of Asian American Music, Sound, and Scholarship. Organized by Music of Asian American Research Center, Seattle, Washington. April 2024

• “Migration and Citizenship: Chinese Musicians after the Cultural Revolution.” Department of Music, New York University. Colloquium. February 2024

Previous Organizations: 

• University of Pennsylvania

• Princeton University

• University of Toronto

Accomplishments:

• Fellow, Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers U

• AAPI Artist Grant, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, U. of Pennsylvania

• Forum on Migration, Wolf Humanities Center, U. of Pennsylvania

Upcoming Projects:

• In progress for fall 2024. “The Archive and the Music Repertoire: Li Delun, Representation, and Diasporic Memory.” Journal of the American Musicological Society.

• October 2024. “Decolonization as Praxis: Intersectional Allyship in Chinese Music Studies and Beyond,” Roundtable Chair, Association for Chinese Music Research Annual Meeting [virtual]

• Submitted. “Gender, Race, and the ‘Yellow Woman’ in Western Classical Music.” Special Issue: East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music, edited by Maiko Kawabata and Ken Ueno. Punctum Books.

My work aims to share underrepresented histories that have been censored, fragmented, and/or dispersed through wars and revolutions. I am concerned with how a greater understanding of our pasts can help build presents and futures with more social and racial equality.