Faculty

Profile

Ho Chak Law is a musicologist whose topics of interest include film music, popular music, Asian American music, and music in the Sinophone world. He is particularly concerned with the anthropology of media and emotion and the politics of performance and representation. He completed a PhD in musicology from the University of Michigan in 2018, with his dissertation “Cinematizing Chinese Opera, Performing Chinese Identities, 1945–1971.” Having received Honorable Mention in Social Justice Paper Prize (2021) from the Society for Ethnomusicology and Rulan Chao Pian Prize (2022) and Barbara Barnard Smith Prize (2017) from the Association for Chinese Music Research, his research has been supported by grants and fellowships from International Council for Traditional Music, American Council for Learned Societies, the Henry Luce Foundation, the University of Michigan, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Hong Kong Arts Development Council. His recent articles could be found in journals such as TDR: The Drama Review (2021, 2023) and Music Theory Spectrum (2024) and edited volumes such as At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice (Indiana University Press, 2023) and Teaching Film from the People's Republic of China (Modern Language Association, 2024). His book project in progress, tentatively titled Fading Decadence: Popular Music and the Politics of the Sinophone in the Late Twentieth Century, explicates the ways popular music defied longstanding Sinocentric discourses by affective, expressive, translingual, and technological means during and after the Cold War.

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