Faye Ma, Musicology

Fanyi Faye Ma is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology working in the intersection of sound studies, performance studies, and media anthropology. Her research examines the media and vocal practices during and after China's Zero-COVID policy in relation to citizenship and everyday experience of the state. She treats sound events ranging from “balcony karaoke” during lockdowns to residents’ self-published recordings of telephone conversation with government workers as performances that rehearse compromised or emergent forms of political subjectivity under a solidifying authoritarian regime. Paying attention to the materiality and aesthetics of sound, she unpacks the sensorial and affective registers of cyclical political catastrophe under China’s historical and ongoing high-modernist social engineering while highlighting the coping mechanisms developed by citizens to survive or penetrate the expanding techno-authoritarian apparatus. Ultimately, she seeks to complicate the dominant narrative about authoritarianism and resistance and challenge the liberal democratic aurality that links sounding with power and quietude with passivity.

Faye has also written about Chinese music ensembles, formation of Asian Americas, and neoliberal multiculturalism in US universities.
 
Faye grew up in Shanghai, China and previously earned a B.A. from Swarthmore College, where she studied Asian Studies, Music, and Religion.

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Teaching (Spring 2026):

• MUSIC 161.01, INTRO TO MUSIC THEORY Synopsis

  Biddle 102, TuTh 03:05 PM-04:20 PM