University of South Florida

School of Music

USF College of Design, Art & Performance

Ya-Hui Cheng

Associate Professor of Music Theory

Email: chengy@usf.edu
Phone: (813) 974-2311

cheng-ya

Ya-Hui Cheng, a native of Taiwan, has taught Music Theory at USF since 2015. Previously she taught at the Fort Valley State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Music Theory from Florida State University, a Master degree in Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Bachelor degree in Music from Queens College, City University of New York. Her research focuses on transcultural sounds in global Chinese popular music and folksongs, exoticism in Italian Operas, and Buddhist music in the Mahayana tradition. She has regularly presented her research at peer-reviewed regional, national, and international conferences in Germany, England, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, and the United States.

Cheng is the author of The Evolution of Chinese Popular Music, Modernization and Globalization, 1927 to the Present (Routledge: Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series, 2023) and Puccini’s Women: Structuring the Role of Feminine in Puccini’s Operas (Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009). Her articles have appeared in Musicology Now, China Policy Institute Analysis Online Journal, The Opera Journal, and the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education. Currently, she is working on a research project with a tentative title, Sino-Chinese Folk Music: Identities, Memories, and Intimacy, which examines cross-strait folk music cultures through the studies of sonic elements in our time.

She was the recipient of the National Opera Association Dissertation Competition Biennial prize for her studies on Giacomo Puccini and has received several prominent awards, including the Florida Education Fund’s McKnight Fellowship, the University of South Florida’s New Research Grant, the Summer Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Public Scholar Fellowship from the Kettering Foundation. Also, Cheng was co-chair of the Analysis of World Music Interest Group and a committee member on Race and Ethnicity (formally called Committee on Diversity), both belonging to the Society for Music Theory.