Intended Audience
A mid-autumn festival talk and music performance event
Historian and Professor Krystyn Moon will introduce the history of orientalist sounds in American popular music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the ways in which Chinese Americans, as metaphorical counterpoint, subverted such practices through the vaudeville stage.In a musical dialogue, Microtone DJ will perform live, mix-making nostalgic Asian oldies and tracing its historical continuance into contemporary global soundscapes. Light refreshment including mooncake pastry and tea will be served, in celebration of the mid-autumn festival.
Krystyn R. Moon is a professor in both the History and American Studies programs at Mary Washington University. Her teaching and research include US immigration history, popular culture, race and ethnic studies, foodways, gender and sexuality, and consumerism. She is the author of Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s (2005), and several articles, essays, reviews, and blogs on American immigration history and ethnic identity. She also serves as the president of the Alexandria Historical Society, and is the past president of the Southeastern Regional Chapter of the American Studies Association.
Menghsin Horng aka 'Microtone' DJ has been a professional DJ since 2000 at KALX Berkeley. She earned an Asian Studies and Communications B.A. at the University of Michigan, and first got hooked on college radio and DJing via the campus radio station, WCBN FM Ann Arbor. Horng did graduate studies at UC Berkeley in East Asian Languages & Cultures (Chinese, with a Designated Emphasis in Film Studies), and also earned an MLIS at San Jose State University, she is also a librarian who still revels working with local, institutional, and public archives.