Biography
Christina Sunardi is an associate professor in the Ethnomusicology program in the School of Music at the University of Washington, where she has been teaching since 2008. Her interests include performance, identity, spirituality and ethnography in Indonesia. Her work focuses in particular on the articulation of gender through music, dance, and theater in the cultural region of east Java.
Her publications include articles in Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde, Asian Music, and Ethnomusicology, as well as reviews in the Journal of Folklore Research Reviews, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, and Indonesia. Dr. Sunardi has been studying and performing Javanese arts since 1997 in Indonesia and the United States, earning her Ph.D. in music from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. Her book about the negotiation of gender and tradition through dance and music in east Java was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2015.
Research
Selected Research
- Sunardi, Christina, 2014. Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance. University of Illinois Press.
- 2013. “Complicating Senses of Masculinity, Femininity, and Islam Through The Performing Arts in Malang, East Java.” In Performance, Popular Culture, and Piety in Muslim Southeast Asia. Edited by Timothy P. Daniels, 135-160. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- 2012. “Islam in Java: A Powerful Presence.” Seattle Times. 31 May.
- 2011. “Negotiating Authority and Articulating Gender: Performer Interaction in Malang, East Java.” Ethnomusicology 55/1: 31-54.
- 2010. “Making Sense and Senses of Locale Through Perceptions of Music and Dance in Malang, East Java.” Asian Music 41/1: 89-126.
- 2009. “Pushing at the Boundaries of the Body: Cultural Politics and Cross-Gender Dance in East Java.” Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia) 165/4: 459-492.