Name: Yun Emily Wang, “Listening for Otherwise Aliveness”
Start: 2026-02-19T16:30:00
Location: Earl V. Moore Building

University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance

“This talk is an ethnography of listening in what I will call the Chinese Canadian Care Home for the Aged, a residential proto-medical institution in one of Toronto’s “ethnoburbs.” Established by and serving Chinese immigrants, the Care Home relies on liberal celebrations of “culturally appropriate care” to promise successful aging, and maintains funding by performing a Chineseness legible to the “cunning” of Canadian Multiculturalism (Povinelli 2002). Music shoulders the burden of “culture” across hundreds of residents, staff, and volunteers from across the diaspora: Karaoke Wednesdays and Opera Fridays punctuate the daily repetition of Cantopop broadcast, between live performances of recognizably traditional Chinese genres. In the Care Home, culturally appropriate music comes to signal life, against the hums and beeps of breathing machines foretelling death.