Assistant Professor, Anthropology
1085 S. University Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107
phone: 734-764-7276
hours: Fridays 1-3 PM via sign-up link
About
Dr. Hsieh (謝; English pronunciation: “shay”; Mandarin pronunciation: "she-YEH") investigates sensory practices in institutional and technological settings, with an emphasis on urban East Asia. Her ethnographic sensibilities were cultivated during her time as a Congressional Page for the U.S. House of Representatives, which coincided with 9/11, and in which she witnessed the national response from within the House Chambers. This, combined with her background as a classically-trained pianist and studio audio engineer, led to her unique approach to anthropology that brings together sound and sensory studies, science and technology studies, and anthropology of the state. Dr. Hsieh uses a combination of ethnographic, historical, and experimental methods, including audio recordings, soundwalks, and GIS, to explore the multisensory configurations of human sociality. Of significance to her research is a sustained, interdisciplinary commitment to the history of technology, media and communication studies, musicology, and Asian studies. Since receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Stanford, she has held research fellowships at the Vossius Center at the University of Amsterdam, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Fairbank Center at Harvard.
Her most recent book project, tentatively titled From Festival to Decibel: Making Noise in Urban Taiwan, analyzes the sociality of hearing and the production of noise as a material and discursive object in Taiwan’s environmental noise-control system. The book examines the way residents, civil servants, and environmental inspectors transform the fleeting qualities of sound into the regulatory object of noise that ties personal acts of hearing and listening with geopolitical questions of citizenship and belonging. Her work has appeared in American Ethnologist, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Inquiry, Sound Studies Journal, and the edited volumes Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality (2020, Oxford University Press) and Resounding Taiwan: Musical Reverberations across a Vibrant Island (2021, Routledge).
Publications (Selected)
2022. “Noisy Co-Existence: Contestations of Renao and Zaoyin amidst Taiwan’s Noise Control System.” In Resounding Taiwan: Musical Reverberations Across a Vibrant Island, edited by Nancy Guy, 165–79. New York: Routledge.
2021. "Making Noise in Urban Taiwan: Decibels, the State, and Sono-sociality." American Ethnologist. 48(1): 51-64.
2021. "Noise Viscerality: Navigating Relations in a Sonic Climate." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 11(2): 491-505.
2020. “To Hear as I Do: The Concessions of Hearing in Taiwan’s Noise Management System.” In Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality, edited by Viktoria Tkaczyk, Mara Mills, and Alexandra Hui, 189–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2019. "Piano Transductions: Music, Sound and Noise in Urban Taiwan." Sound Studies Journal. 5(1)4-21: 4-21.
