Reading, writing, performing, and years of leading humanities and music discussion sections made me a teacher and conversant who is effective yet sensitive. In teaching, I treat students' often diverse backgrounds and experience as assets in understanding the subject matters at hand, and modify my teaching plans for the students as I see fit.

 

I invite you to visit the dedicated page about my course "Introduction to Western Classical Music." It's interesting, I promise! 

Siu Hei addressing the audience at the Intercultural Music (IcM) Conference and Concerts (2016), in which he was chief curator and coordinator. Photo credit to Leticia Ng.

Siu Hei addressing the audience at the Intercultural Music (IcM) Conference and Concerts (2016), in which he was chief curator and coordinator. Photo credit to Leticia Ng.

Taught 4 university courses as instructor

  • Music Appreciation (Western Classical Music) (180 students, lecture hall style)

  • Topics in Music of the Classic, Romantic, and Modern Periods:
    Music and the Theatrical Mask (20 students, upper-level undergraduate seminar)

  • Popular Music: Identities and Politics of Hong Kong (15 students, undergraduate lecture class)

  • Popular Music: Chinese Pop and Culture (20 students, undergraduate lecture class)

Led 335 discussion sessions as teaching assistant

  • History of Western Music (3-quarter sequence for music majors)

  • Music of Multicultural America

  • Japanese Pop Music

  • Revelle Humanities Writing Program

    • The Foundations of Western Civilization: Israel and Greece

    • Rome, Christianity, and the Middle Ages

    • Renaissance, Reformation, and Early Modern Europe

    • Developed curriculum for students with basic writing needs. Most students were minorities and international students in these sections.

Teaching Interests

  • Music, Sound Studies, and Disability Studies

  • Music Fundamentals, Music Theory, and Aural Training

  • Intercultural Musical Practices (different designs as a seminar for music majors and a lecture course for general education)

  • Challenges of Modernity: Operas (as a liberal arts humanities course)

  • History of Western Music/ Music Literature

  • American Music

Publications and Presentations

 

 "The Music and Social Politics of Pierrot, 1884-1915," PhD dissertation
University of California, San Diego

(In preparation) “Unpolitical Memory, Political Forgetfulness: Contesting Nationhoods in the Music of Postcolonial Hong Kong”

(In preparation) “Listening Through the Disabled Body: One-handed Pianist Paul Wittgenstein and Musical Modernism”

Joint Plenary Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Irish Chapter of the International Council for Traditional Music
Dublin, Ireland/ Virtual

  • presented the paper “Composing the Carnival: Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912)” (2021)

Music in Times of Crisis Study Day
Carleton University, Canada/ Virtual

  • presented the paper “Music Limitations in Political Crises: Lessons from Turn-of-the-Century France and Beyond” (2021)

International Biennial Conference on Music Since 1900
Huddersfield, United Kingdom

  • presented the paper “Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (1915): Pierrot and the Loss of Power in Theatre and Music in the Public Sphere” (2019)


International Musicological Society Congress
Tokyo, Japan

  • presented the paper “Derivative Music as Response to Political Apathy in Hong Kong” (2017)

Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting
Austin, Texas
Eureka! Musical Minds of California Conference
University of California, Santa Cruz

  • presented the paper “Unpolitical Memory, Political Forgetfulness: Three Postcolonial Discourses in the Music of Hong Kong” (2015)

    American Musicological Society Pacific Southwest Chapter Meeting
    San Diego State University

  • presented the paper “Listening Through the Disabled Body: One-handed Pianist Paul Wittgensteinand Musical Modernism” (2015)


Society for Ethnomusicology Southern California and Hawaii Chapter Meeting
University of California, Riverside

  • presented the paper “Chinese Non-Identified: Overseas Students and Chinese Popular Music” (2013)

dGenerate Film online.

Interdisciplinary Arts Graduate Student Conference
Ohio University, Athens

  • presented the paper “Musical Programming, Physical Space, and Symbolic Meaning: Confronting Monarchy and Democracy in the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremonies” (2012).


Hark Memory Chinese Community Yearbook San Diego, California

  • Interview article with Paul Pickowicz (historian, sinologist, Distinguished Professor of History at UC San Diego) (2013), and

  • Interview article with Paul Chu (former and first Vice Chancellor of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) (2012)