Yun Emily Wang

Yun Emily Wang is an ethnographer of sound and music. Working at the nexus of sound studies, Asian American/Canadian and diaspora studies, and intersectional queer and feminist thought, Emily is broadly interested in how the politics of difference orient people’s experience of sound.

Emily’s current book project is an ethnography of everyday sounding and listening practices among Chinese-speaking immigrants living and feeling the cunning of Canadian multiculturalism. With case studies on queer diaspora, geriatric care facilities, and the gendered geography of intimacy, this book ultimately argues for the political potential of “mishearing” in minoritarian life. They are additionally working on two projects related to silence and quietude, and sonic registers of appetite and desire.

Emily plays the erhu, but only with a critical distance. She also experiments with a viola plugged into looping pedals.