Degree Pursued: PhD

Anticipated Degree Year: -

Committee Chair/Advisor: Nick Salvato

Discipline: Hip-Hop Studies, Sound Studies, Vietnamese Diasporic Studies, Performing Studies

Primary Language: Vietnamese, Thai, German, English

Research Interest: My research focus is currently the intimacies found between Southeast Asian rap and hip-hop's roots in NYC and later, Los Angeles. I focus on the DJ-MC's relationship and the DJ's use of turntablism to uplift communities. I analyze hip-hop’s entanglements with Blackness as a fixed ontological categorical position. In my work, I attempt to answer a few pleas in their research: Marquis Bey's, for gender abolition and Paul Gilroy's, against categorical closure while using Michelle Wright’s theory of Blackness as a “when” and “where.” By examining hip-hop culture and music in Southeast Asia, I hope to find answers for these pleas.