Time: May 26, 2025 (Monday) 10:00-12:00 am

Venue: Alois Osterwalder Hall, NTNU GIEM (2F, No. 31, Shida Rd., Taipei)

Topic/Title: From Field Experience to Data to Interpretation to Theory: Tips, Experiments, and Failures

This presentation is a set of reflections on how I think about ethnographic research. How have I transformed ethnographic ‘data’ into something more? I will explore three examples about researching taiko in California, drawn from my book Louder and Faster: T-shirts, anger, and attitudes toward pain. I will explore how ethnographic experiences can become theory, and how thinking about theory can open the ethnographer’s eyes and ears. 

Guest Lecturer: Deborah Wong

  ‧Ethnomusicologist and Professor Emerita of Music at the University of California, Riverside

Deborah Wong is an ethnomusicologist and Professor Emerita of Music at the University of California, Riverside. She has written three books: Louder and Faster: Pain, Joy, and the Body Politic in Asian American Taiko (2019), Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music (2004), and Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Ritual (2001). She served as editor for Nobuko Miyamoto’s extraordinary memoir, Not Yo’ Butterfly: My Long Song of Relocation, Race, Love, and Revolution (2021). Committed to public sector work at the national, state, and local levels, she serves on the board of Great Leap and hosts a weekly radio show titled Gold Mountain for KUCR 88.3 FM in Riverside. She was a member of the Taiko Center of Los Angeles for many years and still dances bon-odori every summer in Southern California Obon gatherings. She is a core member of the collaborative team that recently published the oral history book Riverside Women Creating Change: Stories and Inspiration from Activists and Organizers (Inlandia Institute, 2024).

◆This lecture is sponsored by BEST Program, Office of Bilingual Education, NTNU.