Rutgers University Professor Honored for Her Book on Chinatown Opera Theater

Nancy Y. Rao, a professor of music at Rutgers University in New Jersey, recently was presented with the 2019 Book Award in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. She was honored for her book Chinatown Opera Theater in North American (University of Illinois Press, 2017).

The citation for the award states that “by chronicling performance practices in detail, the book not simply reorients our understanding of this cultural phenomenon but it also offers a means to see how Chinatown Opera often conditioned notions of Chinese belonging and citizenship within the wider scope of geographic North America and beyond.”

Professor Rao’s book previously won the Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society and the Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music.

Dr. Rao is a graduate of National Taiwan Normal University, where she majored in music. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Michigan.