Since 2022, I have maintained the Substack newsletter Unmusable. When I began writing Unmusable as part of my period as a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellow in Taipei, I published almost weekly. Since returning from Taiwan, I have added much more sporadically to my newsletter. Nevertheless, I continue to provide sporadic updates.
I devote much of this blog to my experiences as a field researcher in Taiwan. I also share my thoughts on contemporary media, particularly from Taiwan and China, and reflect on my experiences as a music educator. Very occasionally, I also share more personal reflections.
Below are links to a few examples of posts that I have written in the past couple of years. The full archive is available on Substack. If you decide you would like to stay up to date, you can subscribe for free, and your support is hugely appreciated! If you aren’t ready to subscribe, you can click through the subscription prompt and proceed straight to any post that catches your eye.
Field Research
An account of my field work trip to Taiwan’s unofficial pavilion at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan. I discuss what it means for global understandings of Taiwan to focus almost exclusively on Taiwan as a tech hub, to the detriment of more nuanced understanding of life on this island.
In this three-part post, I describe my experience on Taiwan’s Green Island 綠島. I problematize the disconnect between the island’s current status as an affordable spring break destination, its history as Taiwan’s most notorious political prison, and Green Island’s place in contemporary imaginings of human rights in Taiwan.
Cultural Commentary
I discuss three different documentary films focusing on musical subjects, all of which were featured in the 2022 Sinophone Musics Film Festival, which was jointly organized by the Shanghai Conservatory and National Taiwan Normal University. I unpack the different kinds of artistic impulses and motivations that we can see driving these films.
As the first East Asian contestant to win Rupaul’s Drag Race, drag performer Nymphia Wind became an important representative for Queer Asians all over the world. But her persona’s reliance on Taiwanese iconography also made this an important moment of global recognition for Taiwan’s queer community.
Personal Reflections
I reflect on my experiences as a life-long learner of foreign languages, first as a “Third-Culture Kid” growing up abroad, and then as a doctoral student who needed to acquire language skills for professional reasons. In particular, I consider the links between linguistic proficiency, identity, and belonging.
This post is grounded in an archival research experience at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan. Rather than focusing on historical details, however, I consider the surprising ways that we can find our own experiences and identities reflected in the most unexpected places.
