Samuel S. Chan
Samuel S. Chan is a scholar studying cultural infrastructure, knowledge institutions, and imperialism in global Asia by combining Sinophone studies, postcolonial theory, and anthropology of elites. He received his PhD and MPhil from New York University, his MA from University of California San Diego, and his BA (First Class Honors), with minors in French and German, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He also attended the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University.
He has presented his research at the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, International Musicological Society, and other conferences in Europe, Asia, and the US. He has been invited to give lectures on voice, sound, and media digitalization, as well as to be a respondent in panels on East Asian studies, race, and posthumanism. He has co-organized two academic conferences, Sonic Fluidities and Un/Sounding the Relational City, a colloquium series, and has served on various board committees and task forces at professional societies.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and grants, including the Henry M. MacCracken Fellowship, NYU Center for the Humanities Fellowship, Hollace A. Schafer Memorial Award, Hewitt Pantaleoni Prize, C.V. Starr Grant for Asian/Pacific/American Research, Hong Kong Jockey Club Musicology Scholarship, Bernard van Zuiden Prize, HKSAR Government Scholarship, Kunkle and Pommerenke Grand Scholarship, Peter Curzon Oram Scholarship, Au Yeung Lun Scholarship, Woo Sau Wing Scholarship, and many others.
As a musician, he has performed in New York, San Diego, Osaka, Kyoto, Kagoshima, Arcidosso (Italy), Shanghai, Shenzhen, Macao, and Hong Kong.
Education
Research Interests
Anthropology of elites, critical university studies
Culture, knowledge, and imperialism in global Asia
Infrastructure and digitalization of sound, voice, and media
Conference Presentations
Respondent to keynote by Rey Chow: Voice, Accents, Selves
AMS/SEM/SMT Joint Annual Meeting, New Orleans 2022
Restaging the Colonial Encounter: Musical Knowledge in Hong Kong
International Musicological Society, Athens 2022
Conscripts of Global Music Studies
The Musicological Discipline in East Asia, IMS East Asia 2021
Globality, Digitality, and Banality in Music Studies
Music Studies in the Age of Abundance, University of Birmingham 2021
Sinophone Discords: The Politics of Musical Hatred
Hatred and/of Music, Music & Philosophy Study Group, AMS/SMT 2020
Respondent, Mapping Music and East Asia
Global East Asian Music Research Study Group, AMS/SMT 2020
Panelist, Truth and Narratives
Music and Scholarship in the Shadow of a Rising China, SEM 2020
Haunting Vocalities: Sinophone Articulations across Asia/America
SEM Mid-Atlantic Chapter, UNC Chapel Hill 2020
Harvard Graduate Music Forum, Harvard University 2020
Sinophonic Discords
AMS New England, Amherst College 2019
Traversing Territories
Music and Borders, University of Michigan 2018
The Politics of a Howl
Techniques of Listening, University of Minnesota 2017
Listening to Abjection and Politics
Music, Multiculturalism, and the Postcolonial Condition, Helsinki 2017
Listening
Keywords: Rethinking Hong Kong Cultures, HKU 2017