Keynote Speakers

Eric Hung (he or they) is Executive Director of the Music of Asian America Research Center, Curator of the AA+NH/PI Learning Pathway for Smithsonian Folkways, and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies.  Prior to joining the nonprofit world full-time, he was a tenure-track and tenured professor of music history at the University of Montana and Rider University.  Hung is also an active pianist and conductor who has performed in Germany, Australia, Thailand, Australia, and throughout North America.  A long-time member of the New York-based Gamelan Dharma Swara, he recently joined Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture’s Arab Percussion Ensemble.  He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University and an MLIS in archives and digital curation from the University of Maryland. 

Loren Kajikawa (He/Him/His) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Music Program at The George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. His teaching and research explore the intersection of race and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and he is author of Sounding Race in Rap Songs (UC Press, 2015) and the essay “The Possessive Investment in Classical Music: Confronting Legacies of White Supremacy in Schools and Departments of Music."

Jennifer Koh (she/hers) is recognized for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. A forward-thinking artist, she is dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire, while promoting equity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects, and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for her. She is an active lecturer, teacher, and recording artist for Cedille Records; and is Artistic Director of arco collaborative, an artist-driven nonprofit that fosters a better understanding of our world through a musical dialogue inspired by ideas and the communities around us.

Frederick Lau (he or they) is an ethnomusicologist whose scholarly interests include a broad range of topics in Chinese, Western, and Asian music and cultures.  He is currently chair of Music, professor of Ethnomusicology, and director of the Center for Chinese Music Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is author of Music in China  (Oxford) and co-editor of Making Waves: Traveling Musics in Asia and the Pacific (University of Hawaii Press), Vocal Music and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Music: Unlimited Voices in East Asia and the West (Routledge), Locating East Asia in Western Art Music (Wesleyan), in addition to articles in numerous journals. He is the editor of the book series “Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific,” University of Hawaii Press. Prior to teaching in Hong Kong since 2018, he was professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and California Polytechnic State University. 

Grace Wang (she/her) is Associate Professor of American Studies at UC Davis. She teaches, writes, and researches about Asian American studies, transnational American studies, immigration, race, and music. She is the author of Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race Through Musical Performance (Duke University Press, 2015), and is currently at work on a documentary film about African American timpanist Elayne Jones and a book project exploring moments of organizing and Black activism in the classical orchestral field.

Mari Yoshihara (she/her) is Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specializing in U.S. cultural history, the history of U.S.-Asian relations, literary and cultural studies. She is the author of Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford, 2003), Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple, 2007), Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro (Oxford, 2019), as well as a number of books in Japanese. Since 2014, she has served as the editor of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association.