We are thrilled to announce that Christina Sunardi has been named chair for the Department of Dance for a five-year term beginning July 1, 2020. Christina is an associate professor in the Ethnomusicology program in the School of Music at the UW, 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. See below for more information about her research. Christina succeeds Associate Professor Jennifer Salk who will be stepping down on June 30th after six and a half years of chairing.
Christina Sunardi’s 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.