About Shelley
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.
Dr. Zhang has presented at the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, British International Studies Association, and various universities in Canada, the U.S., and U.K. Her second project examines the global development of music conservatories during the 20th and 21st centuries in relation to evolutions of capitalism and neoliberalism.
She is currently the Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Rutgers University – Mason Gross School of the Arts, where she teaches “Principles of Ethnomusicology,” “Introduction to Musics of the World,” and seminars on special topics.
Beyond her scholarly work, Dr. Zhang is passionate about working collaboratively to make education more accessible for diverse learners and exploring the power of storytelling in fiction and non-fiction forms. Her poem, “The Price of Ambition,” was recently published (2023) by Mormolyke Press and will be performed in a choral piece of the same name for SSAA voices, with music by Melissa Dunphy. It was commissioned by The Body Image Consortium and will be performed by the Atlanta Women’s Chorus and in Minneapolis in 2024.
EDUCATION
University of Pennsylvania. M.A. & Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology (2015-2022)
Certificate in College and University Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning (2019)
Master of Arts (2018)
University of Toronto, Faculty of Music. M.A. in Ethnomusicology (2013-2015)
University of Toronto, Faculty of Music. B.Mus, with Honours (2008-2012)
Specialization in Music History and Theory, Classical Piano
Royal Conservatory of Music (Canada). Diploma in Piano Performance (2007)