research

Areas of Focus
popular music, Asia-Pacific-America, transnationalism, digital humanities, media & technology

My research explores transpacific musical practices in popular music genres. I study the complex hybridization of musical genres and experiences emerged between Asia and America. My research examines: How musicians of Asian affiliations (descent, residence, nationality, diaspora, etc) reinvent musical materials from existing ethnically tied musical genres; how they form social networks; and how they transform their on-stage and off-stage identities in the increasingly technologized and globalized ecology.

I wrote a dissertation that investigates the geographical contours of Asian America and the process of disidentification with “Asian American” category through the lens of the second and 1.5-generation Asian American independent rock musicians. Informed by the research on transnationalism, mutliculturalism, racial melancholia, this project examines the music, performances, and social media of musicians whose ethnic and racial identification falls outside of the black-and-white racial binary in the United States. Read about my dissertation.

My methodological interests lie in developing a multimodal field research and ethnography. I work to develop software tools and repurpose social media, GIS and mapping technologies to enhance field research and ethnographic work in the 21st century. Read about my digital projects.

Selected Publications :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Digital Ethnography Toward Augmented Empiricism: A New Methodological Framework,” Journal of Digital Humanities, Volume 3, No. 1, 2014 [official link, PDF]

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Troubling genre, ethnicity and geopolitics in Taiwanese American independent rock music” Popular Music, Volume 32, Special Issue 01, January, 2013. DOI: 10.1017/S0261143012000578 [official link, PDF]

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Mapping The Kominas’ Sociomusical Transnation: Punk, Diaspora, and Digital Media,” Asian Journal of Communication, Volume 23, No. 4, 2013, pp. 386-402. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2013.804103 [official link, PDF]

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Resisting Multiculturalism: Racial and Gender Politics of Indie Rock in Asian America”, Proceedings of the International Association of the Study of Popular Music – International Meeting, University of Liverpool, UK, July 12-17, 2009 DOI: 10.5429/2225-0301.2009.16 [official link, PDF]

+ Steven Kemper, Wendy Hsu, Carey Sergent, Josef Taylor, Linda Wei. “Movable Party: a bicycle-powered system for interactive musical performance.” In Proceedings of the 2014 International Computer Music Conference and Sound and Music Computing Conference (Athens, Greece: ICMC/SMC, 2014) 527-531. [PDF]

+ Hsu, Wendy and Sargent, Carey. “Rocking Out Between the Local and the Global: Transnational Independent Music Industry in Taiwan”, Amalgam, September 2008 [PDF].

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Review: Queering the Popular Pitch edited by Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga,” Journal of Popular Music Studies, (September 2008) [PDF].

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Review: Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance by Tomie Hahn”, Women and Music, (September 2008) [PDF].

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Queering and Reading Plato in Hedwig and the Angry Inch“, Queer Pop Culture, ed. Peele, Thomas. Palgrave-Macmillan, May 2007 [PDF].

+ Hsu, Wendy. “Between Narrative and Expressive, Fantasy and Melodrama in Bombay Film,” Virginia Review of Asian Studies, vol. 5 (2003) [PDF].