Hao Huang, professor and chair of the Music Department at 61传媒, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, during the 2007-2008 academic year. He will lecture on race and ethnicity in the formation of American musical identity.
“I focus on these disparate traditions to address how music as cultural practice informs the construction of racial and ethnic identities, and this will be the first time that students at ELU will have the opportunity to investigate this core aspect of American cultural ‘particularism,'” said Huang. “Community histories often reflect not only what has happened in the past, but aspirations for what they wish to become in the future.”
Huang chose Budapest because of the close friendships he has cultivated with several Hungarian musicians while performing with them in the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. “I’ve always found an emotional resonance with the passionate abandon of Hungarian music, and I have been delighted with the kind reception given to my own music making by Hungarian musical colleagues,” he said. Huang will also give solo piano and chamber music performances at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary and Poland.
Huang will lecture PhD students in Eotvos’ Department of Comparative Literature. Along with the course on race and ethnicity in American musical identity, he will also teach a comparative study of Tewa Pueblo Dance Ceremonies, Hawaiian hula auana, and Black gospel traditions.
The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided approximately 279,500 people鈥�105,400 Americans who have studied, taught or researched abroad and 174,100 students, scholars and teachers from other countries who have engaged in similar activities in the United States鈥攚ith the opportunity to observe each other’s political, economic, educational and cultural institutions, to exchange ideas and to embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world’s inhabitants. The program operates in over 150 countries worldwide. Recipients of the Fulbright are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.