Musicology students present research at the Fall 2025 American Musicological Society Midwest Chapter Conference
Musicology PhD student Siqi Tong and PhD candidate Colin Rensch recently presented their research at the Fall 2025 American Musicological Society – Midwest Chapter Conference, held at Oakland University in Rochester, MI and hybrid over Zoom.
Tong delivered a lightning talk on the panel, Hybridity, Identity, and Modernity in East Asian Contemporary Music, chaired by Professor M. (EJ) Eagen‑Jones. Her presentation, titled “The Slowing Tempo of ‘Erquan Yingyue’: The Shift in Performance Contexts of Chinese Traditional Music and the Formation of the Elite Performance System,” addressed the ways in which Chinese traditional repertoires have been re-contextualized in modern performance systems, like conservatories.
Rensch, whose dissertation examines the cultural and social history of the Hammond organ, presented a paper entitled “Sitting in or Leaving Out: Gender, Racial, and Musical Representation in the Hammond Times.” His work explores how gender and race were negotiated in organ-based media and in mid-20th-century performance contexts in the United States.
Current AD student HyunJin Baek and DMA recipient and alumna Peiqi Huang also participated in the panel, presenting on identity negotiation among Korean female composers (Baek) and East-West hybridization in modern Chinese art songs (Huang). Along with Tong and Rensch, their scholarship was a central to Illinois’s representation at the meeting.
Further information about all presenters and abstracts can be found in the online program of the AMS–Midwest Fall 2025 Meeting.