Dr. Vivian Luong
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
Office: Catlett Music Center 127I
Vivian Luong is a music theorist who studies the ethics of music analysis, feminist and queer theory, Schenkerian analysis, and affective autoethnography. Her dissertation, “Analysis as Ethics: Experiments with Music Loving,” explores the caring practices and harmful effects of analysis through the perspectives of feminist music theory and new materialisms. Vivian is currently working on a book project that reconsiders key music-theoretical concepts, such as bodies, love, and musical agency, in dialogue with Black, Indigenous, and other minoritized perspectives.
Her research on these topics appears in Music Theory Online, Theory and Practice, the Engaged Music Theory Blog, and the podcast Her Music Academia. As well, her work will be published in several forthcoming collections including Queer Ear, The Oxford Handbook on Musical Variation and Thematic Techniques, Modeling Musical Analysis, and Trauma-informed Pedagogy in the Music Classroom. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Institute on Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan.
Committed to forming coalitional academic spaces, Vivian served on the Society for Music Theory LGBTQ+ Task Force that examined how music theory can better support LGBTQ+ members and scholarship. The task force’s efforts culminated in the creation of the Standing Committee on LGBTQ+ Issues, of which she currently serves as chair. Vivian also participates in the Engaged Music Theory Working Group as a mentor and co-curator of its bibliography of resources on connecting music theory to broader cultural perspectives.
At the University of Oklahoma, Vivian regularly teaches courses in the undergraduate theory core and a graduate course on the pedagogy of music theory, as well as offering graduate seminars on topics including music and the body, music and disability, and theorizing global musics. Prior to joining the faculty at OU, Vivian worked at the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan, where she received her PhD in music theory.
- PhD (Music Theory) - University of Michigan
- MA (Music Theory) - McGill University
- BM (Piano Performance and Music Theory) - Wilfrid Laurier University
