Meredith SchweigAssociate Professor of Ethnomusicology

• PhDHarvard University2013
• MAHarvard University2007
• BAHarvard University2003

Meredith Schweig’s research explores twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular musics of East Asia, with a particular emphasis on narrative, gender, and cultural politics in post-authoritarian Taiwan. She completed her MA and PhD in ethnomusicology at Harvard University, where she also received her BA in Music and East Asian Studies.

An associate professor of ethnomusicology at Emory, she is the author of Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan (University of Chicago Press, 2022). A second book project in process refracts questions about vocality, agency, and transmedia storytelling through a study of global pop icon Teresa Teng. She maintains additional research interests in sensory studies, disability studies, medical ethnomusicology, history of art and architecture, and the museology/musicology nexus.

Schweig is the recipient of a 2023-2024 Scholar Grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Previously, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan (2020-2021), and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Hyperstudio Fellow at MIT (2013-2015). She has received additional fellowships and grants from Fulbright IIE, Fulbright-Hays, the Asian Cultural Council, the Whiting Foundation, the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, the Chiu Family Foundation, the Emory University Research Committee, and the Emory University Provost’s Research Fund. 

Schweig’s 2016 article “‘Young Soldiers, One Day We Will Change Taiwan’: Masculinity Politics in the Taiwan Rap Scene” was awarded both the Marcia Herndon Prize and the Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her 2014 article "Hoklo Hip-Hop: Re-signifying Rap as Local Narrative Tradition in Taiwan” was awarded the Rulan Chao Pian Publication Prize from the Association for Chinese Music Research.

Schweig recently completed her term as President of the Association for Chinese Music Research (2017-2020) and was previously Associate Editor of CHINOPERL: The Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literatures (2016-2019). 

At Emory, she teaches introductions to ethno/musicology, as well as courses on ethnographic fieldwork methods, Sinophone popular musics, musical narrative, and global hip-hop. She is affiliated faculty in the East Asian Studies Program. In 2022, Schweig served as an Emory University Arts and Social Justice Fellowship Faculty Partner.

Listen to Dr. Schweig discuss her research on Taiwan rap with Radio Taiwan International here and here. Listen to her discuss Renegade Rhymes on the New Books Network podcast here.

Books

Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan (University of Chicago Press, 2022)

• Mandarin translation forthcoming with Flâneur Culture Lab (Taipei), 2024.

Enter the Butterfly: Voicing Teresa Teng in Post-Cold War Taiwan (in preparation)

Selected Articles and Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

“Never Been to Me: Forging Feminist Perspectives on the Work of Teresa Teng” (in preparation)

“Legacy, Agency, and the Voice(s) of Teresa Teng,” in Resounding Taiwan: Musical Reverberations Across a Vital Island, edited by Nancy Guy, 213-228. London: Routledge, 2021.

“Like an Erhu Player on the Roof: Music as Multilayered Diasporic Negotiation at a Taiwanese- and Jewish-American Wedding,” in Music in the American Diasporic Wedding, edited by Inna Naroditskaya, 103-126. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019.

“'Young Soldiers, One Day We Will Change Taiwan’: Masculinity Politics in the Taiwan Rap Scene,” Ethnomusicology 60, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 383-410.

• Spanish translation: Spanish translation: “‘Jóvenes Soldados, Un Día Cambiaremos Taiwán’: Políticas de Masculinidad en la Escena Rap de Taiwán” in Redefiniciones: Etnomusicología en traducción para un nuevo siglo. Translated by Javier Silva-Zurita, edited by Jacob Rekedal, 371-414. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2022.

“Hoklo Hip-Hop: Re-signifying Rap as Local Narrative Tradition in Taiwan,” CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 33, no. 1 (July 2014): 37-59.

Selected Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries

“Taiwanese Hip-Hop” in Hsin-Hung Michael Hsiao, ed. Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies, Brill (forthcoming).

 “Teresa Teng” in Hsin-Hung Michael Hsiao, ed. Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies, Brill (forthcoming).

Review of Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music, eds. Eva Tsai, Tung-Hung Ho, and Miaoju Jian (Routledge, 2020) in Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 53 (January 2022): 168-169.

“At Long Last, The Rappers Take Center Stage on MTV,” Taiwan Beats, August 7, online (https://taiwanbeats.tw/archives/11936).

Review of The Moon Represents My Heart: Music, Memory, and Belonging, exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America in ACMR Newsletter 25, no. 1 (June 2020): 18-19.

“Taiwanese Traditional and Popular Music,” in Music Around the World: A Global Encyclopedia, edited by Andrew R. Martin and Matthew Mihalka, 872-879. ABC-CLIO, 2020.

Review of Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance, by Grace Wang (Duke University Press, 2015) in Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 74, no. 2 (December 2017): 260-263.