About Dr. Zhang
Shelley Zhang is a writer, researcher, and musician from Toronto, Canada who is currently based between Philadelphia and New York City. She works as the Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (New Jersey) and serves as the President of the Association for Chinese Music Research. 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. She develops this work through a new theory of “strategic citizenship” and grounds it in extensive multi-sited fieldwork, with primary locations in China, Canada, and the United States. Dr. Zhang has been supported by various fellowships and grants, including 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 Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University, and the Institute for the Research on Women at Rutgers University, amongst others. She has also presented this work 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 studies Asiatic femininity and the haunting legacy of the “yellow woman” as it impacts contemporary artistic practices. Concurrently, she continues archival work on the Chinese conductor Li Delun. As in all her work, she combines historical and anthropological methods.
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 commissioned by the composer Melissa Dunphy and published by Mormolyke Press in 2023. In 2024, it was performed in Minneapolis and New Brunswick, New Jersey by SSAA choirs. She continues to write poetry and, when possible, reads contemporary poetry and fiction. Trained as a classical pianist by Boris Lysenko, Alla Zacarelli, and Rena Lu, and organ by John Tuttle, Dr. Zhang draws from her musical background in her various practices.
In 2025, she will be speaking at Brandeis University and the University of Pennsylvania, completing various articles and book chapters, and drafting her first monograph.
Work & Education
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology (2023-Present)
Lecturer of Ethnomusicology (2022-2023)
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)
B.Mus. with Honours (2008-2012)
Specialization in Music History and Theory, Classical Piano
Royal Conservatory of Music, Canada
Diploma in Piano Performance (2007)
