New Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Joanna Chang

Dr. Joanna Chang, visiting assistant professor of music, received her PhD in musicology from Duke University. Her research investigates underrepresented composers under the influence of Brahms, and has recently extended to East Asian popular genres, as well as the representation of symphonic works on the soundtracks of Hollywood and East Asian film. Her dissertation, “Probing the Brahmsnebel: 1875-1910,” expanded traditional Western art music narratives by opening new perspectives on the underexplored symphonic, chamber, and keyboard repertoires of Webern, Dohnányi, Giuseppe Martucci, Emanuel Moór, Hubert Parry, Amy Beach and Ethel Smyth. Dr. Chang’s research has appeared in the Nineteenth-Century Music Review (2022), and she has presented at several conferences, including NYU Steinhardt’s Music and Moving Image Conference 2022 (“Brahms in Hong Kong: Nostalgia, Politics, and Post-Colonial Identity in Infernal Affairs 2”), Music and Resistance Conference (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, 2020), and Brahms on the Pacific (UC Irvine, 2019), among others. In recent years, she worked at Duke University’s Thompson Writing Studio, as well as the Academic Resource Center as a Global Learning Consultant, and has served on the faculty at the University of Miami. Dr. Chang is a classically-trained pianist with a DMA in piano performance.