FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music is pleased to announce the appointments of Bess Xintong Liu and Matthew Blackmar as assistant professors of music in musicology, effective Aug. 1.
Born and raised in Nanjing, China, Liu is currently visiting assistant professor of music at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. She earned a Ph.D. in historical musicology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023. Her main research interest lies in twentieth-century global music history, with an emphasis on Sino-Western musical exchange. Her current book project approaches this historiography from a feminist perspective.
In addition to being a musicologist, Blackmar is a media/information studies scholar and classical/pop musician whose research interests orbit the figure of the musical amateur, engaging contemporary digital practice, modern recording engineering and sound design and nineteenth-century print cultures—each through the critical lenses of the social construction of technology, musical authorship and borrowing and “intellectual property.”
“Bess Xintong Liu and Matthew Blackmar are both accomplished scholars conducting compelling research from important perspectives,” said Abra Bush, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean. “We are very pleased that they will make our world-class Musicology Department even more robust.”
Drawing primarily on archives created by and for musicking women, Liu’s book project traces circles that originated in Shanghai and expanded globally to metropolises such as Hong Kong and New York City, unpacking a gendered sense of musicianship by examining musicality in relation to motherhood, daughterhood and sisterhood. respectively. By historicizing women’s transnational musicianship, her project demystifies several gendered racial stereotypes—for instance, the “Asian tiger mom”—and reconsiders Western art music as a fluid cultural practice.
Liu has presented her research at several conferences, including the annual conferences of the American Musicological Society, Society of Ethnomusicology and Association of Asian Studies. Her research appears in journals such as Twentieth-Century Music.
Blackmar’s two book projects respectively examine the pre-history of the “AI turn”—reconciling hip-hop as a digital-music practice with the twenty-first-century algorithmic automation and privatization of music copyright administration—and nineteenth-century print cultures of sheet-music publishing.
His writing has appeared, or will soon appear, in print in the Thurnauer Schriften zum Musiktheater, The Musicology Review and the Journal of Musicological Research. He received the 2024 Paul A. Pisk Prize, 2024–25 Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship, 2024–25 Jan La Rue Travel Grant for Research to Europe and 2011 Ingolf Dahl Award from the American Musicological Society as well as the 2011 Article Prize from The Musicology Review.
“I am thrilled to welcome both Matthew Blackmar and Bess Xintong Liu to the Musicology Department,” said Ayana Smith, department chair. “These talented scholars will each bring new areas of expertise to our department, and I look forward to the ways that their knowledge, creativity and collaboration will enrich our community.”
