Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the SEM 2026 Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the search bar to search by name or title of paper/session. Note that this search bar does not search by keyword.
Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 29th Aug 2026, 08:45:43pm EDT
|
Daily Overview |
| Session | |
|
05C: Listening Beyond Vulnerability: Music, Care, and Resilience Location: Georgian Room | |
| Presentation 2 | |
From Racialized Vulnerability to Sonic Resistance: Asian American Children and Older Adults in Musical Activism during COVID-19 Southern Methodist University During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian violence in the United States was widely mediated through images of vulnerable bodies—particularly older victims and fearful children. While professional artists such as MC Jin and Jessica Sanchez mobilized music to protest this violence, children and older adults also emerged as musical agents. Expanding scholarship on Asian American musical activism that centers primarily on professional rappers (Shao 2025), I shift attention to children and older adults as agents of sonic resistance. This paper examines two case studies: the all-girl youth punk band the Linda Lindas’ shouted anthem “Racist, Sexist Boy” (2021), marked by confrontational, chant-like vocals and distorted guitar riffs, and older Chinese Americans' multilingual community rap “Gai Mou Sou Rap” (2021), delivered through emphatic rhythmic flow while reclaiming the “chicken-feather stick,” a symbol of disciplinary authority in Chinese culture. Drawing on Samia Hesni’s concept of “social script disruption” (2023), alongside close musical and performance analysis and digital ethnography of online comments and media coverage, I argue that these performances interrupt racialized scripts that cast Asian children and older adults as fragile, passive, or apolitical. This disruption operates through timbral aggression, rhythmic insistence, and embodied gestures—including beat-synchronized body rocking and staged disciplinary gestures—that reconfigure vulnerability as defiance. Audience responses register surprise, admiration, and collective solidarity, further reinforcing this disruption. By centering age-coded self-voicing, this paper demonstrates how musical performance transforms racialized vulnerability into recognized political agency, offering a framework for understanding the intersection of age, sound, and resistance in Asian America. | |
