Biography
Christina Sunardi is a 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. Since 2020 she has served as the Chair of the Department of Dance.
Her publications include articles in Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde, Asian Music, Asian Theatre Journal, 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. She has written two books about the negotiation of gender through performing arts in east Java, Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance (University of Illinois Press, 2015) and Fashioning Femininities, Making Masculinities: Gender, Performance and Lived Experience in Java, Indonesia (Lived Places Publishing, 2024).
Research
Selected Research
- Sunardi, Christina. 2024. Fashioning Femininities, Making Masculinities: Gender, Performance, and Lived Experience in Java, Indonesia. New York: Lived Places Publishing.
- Sunardi, Christina. 2024. “Speaking of the Spiritual: An Exploration of Knowledge and Pedagogy in Performing Arts in Malang, East Java.” Asian Theatre Journal 41/2: 235-268.
- Sunardi, Christina. 2023. “The Pleasures of Parikan in Malang, East Java: An Analysis of Text and Music in the Dance Ngremo Putri.” Asian Music 54/2: 6-37.
- Sunardi, Christina. 2022. “Approaching the Magnetic Power of Femaleness through Cross-Gender Dance Performance in Malang, East Java.” In Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music. Edited by Andrew McGraw and Christopher J. Miller, 287-302. Cornell University Press Southeast Asia Program Publications.
- Sunardi, Christina. 2020. “A Mythical Medieval Hero in Modern East Java: The Masked Dance Gunung Sari as an Alternative Model of Masculinity.” Ethnomusicology 64/3: 447-472.
- Sunardi, Christina. 2017. “Talking About Mode in Malang, East Java.” Asian Music 48/2: 62-89.
- 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.