Acting Director, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies; Professor, Musicology
About
Joseph S.C. Lam is Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan, USA. He studies Chinese music with interdisciplinary methods, probing its sonic expressions of Chinese biography, culture, and history. Lam extensively lectures and publishes in Asia, Europe and the US. His representative publications include: State Sacrifices and Music in Ming China (A.D. 1368-1644) (SUNY, 1998); “Huizong’s Dashengyue: A Musical Performance of Emperorship and Officialdom” in Huizong and the Culture of Northern Song China (Harvard, 2006); “Ci Songs from the Song Dynasty: A Ménage à Trois of Lyrics, Music, and Performance” (New Literary History, 2015); “A Proposal on Music of Reminiscence/Huaigu yinyue lilun yu shijian di yige chubu ti’an” (Yinyue yishu, 2019/2); and “Commanding Sounds and Sights: A Case Study of State Processional Music in Late Ming China,” in Sounds of Power: Sonic Court Rituals in-and Outside Europe (Böhlau, 2024). Lam’s latest monograph is his Kunqu, A Classical Opera of Contemporary China (Hong Kong University Press, 2022). Currently, he is working on a monograph entitled Confucius’s Songs: A Global Music History of Chinese Poetic Music.
Affiliation(s)
- Center for Chinese Studies
- Center for Japanese Studies
- Center for Korean Studies
- Confucius Institute
- School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Field(s) of Study
- Asian American Concert Music
- Ethnomusicology
- Music Historiography
- Traditional Chinese Music
- Traditional Japanese Music
