About
Sunhong Kim is a doctoral candidate in the Ethnomusicology program and student in the Women's and Gender Studies certificate program and World Performance certificate program at the University of Michigan. Her doctoral project examines the meaning of instrumental sound in the performance practices by urban-based traditional Korean musicians. She unpacks the structure of hearing by investigating the musical canon and performing skills of kugaki (traditional Korean instruments) that highlight supremacy of one's musicality among 21st century South Korean heteronormative citizens. With her experience of performing piri (double-reed wind instrument) within an institutionalized/mainstream community for ten years, she is currently conducting ethnography-based fieldwork among musicians in top-tiered orchestras and ensembles in Seoul.
Research interests: hybridity of pop and kugak genre, gender politics and power relations in South Korea, and masculinity and sound
