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Yun Emily Wang

Assistant Professor of Music
Music

Overview


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.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Assistant Professor of Music · 2020 - Present Music, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor in the Program of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies · 2021 - Present Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published April 4, 2023
New Listening-Focused Music Minor Turns Music Lovers Into Music Scholars

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Recent Publications


(Un)settling Ears

Journal Article City and Society · April 1, 2025 This short-form ethnographic sketch juxtaposes the narratives of sound, listening, and the idea of “home” from two Taiwanese “astronaut wives” who had immigrated to Toronto. Both women's daily lives were suffused with the absences of their husbands (remain ... Full text Cite

Listening Incommensurably

Journal Article Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture · December 1, 2024 This article juxtaposes two ethnographic moments from five years of fieldwork (2013–18) with a group of queer Taiwanese immigrants in Toronto, which coincided with the pivotal years during which Taiwan became recognized in Anglophone West as Asia’s ... Full text Cite

Doing Tai Chi with “American Music”

Journal Article American Music · December 1, 2022 Full text Cite
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Education, Training & Certifications


University of Toronto (Canada) · 2018 Ph.D.
New York University · 2012 M.A.
University of North Carolina, Greensboro · 2010 M.Mus.
University of Rochester · 2007 B.A.