William Cheng

|Professor
Academic Appointments
  • Chair, Department of Music

  • Professor of Music

I'm Chair and Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. An avid gamer and lifelong pianist-improviser, I work at the intersections of cultural histories, disability studies, media theories, care ethics, race, and queerness. I received a B.A. in Music (Piano Performance) and English (Creative Writing) from Stanford University in 2007 and a Ph.D. in Musicology from Harvard University in 2013. My books include Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2014), Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good (University of MIchigan Press, 2016), Loving Music Till It Hurts (Oxford, 2019), Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (Oxford 2019, coedited with Gregory Barz), and A Cultural History of Western Music in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, coedited with Danielle Fosler-Lussier). I've contributed op-eds and features to Washington Post, Slate, TIME, Huffington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Pacific Standard.

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Contact

63310
Sudikoff Hall, Room 220
HB 6187

Department(s)

Music

Selected Publications

  • SINGLE-AUTHORED BOOKS

    Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2014). Foreword by Richard Leppert

    Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good (University of Michigan Press, 2016). Foreword by Susan McClary.

    Loving Music Till It Hurts (Oxford University Press, 2019).

     

    EDITED VOLUMES

    Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (Oxford University Press, ed. with Greg Barz, 2019).

    A Cultural History of Music in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury Academic, ed. with Danielle Fosler-Lussier).

     

    ARTICLES

    Visit www.willxcheng.com