Research/Areas of Interest:

Arts in post-colonial, post-war, migration and diasporic contexts; Music and dance in the formation of collective memory; Transnationalism and the performance of transitional and social justice; Digital humanities and digital sound archives; Soundscapes and the musical construction of Place; Southeast Asian performing arts; Intangible cultural heritage and globalization.

Education

  • PhD, Anthropology, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre (aka Univ. of Paris X), France, 2014
  • MPhil, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre, France, 2004
  • MA, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre, France, 2003

Biography

Stéphanie Khoury's work draws on extensive fieldwork experience in mainland Southeast Asia, and with Southeast Asian diasporic communities in France and the US, and analyzes the political, social, gendered, and artistic dimensions of Cambodian musical theater and its secularization in post-colonial, post-war, and migration contexts. In her research, she examines performing arts through the interrelated frameworks of religion, collective memory, and social justice, the concept of intangible heritage, and the notion of a globalized space for performance. She is currently working on her first book, a monograph based on the Cambodian all-male musical theater adapting to the drastic cultural and political shifts experienced in Cambodia from the colonial period until now. Expanding from this work, she is looking at the formation of idioms of national culture in the context of Cambodia and Cambodian diasporas, relying on an intersectional framework to discuss the complex and interlocking ways intangible heritage is produced and situated both globally and locally. She is contributing to and co-editing a volume tentatively titled Stagecraft and Cultural Expressions: The Intersectionality of Cambodia's Intangible Heritage to address these issues. Since being based in Boston, she also looks at the formative role of music and dance within local immigrant communities in order to understand how the latter navigate between the preservation of performing arts as heritage, the negotiation of cultural identity, and the expression of individual creativity.

Additionally, Stéphanie Khoury is particularly interested in questions of digital sound archives in the humanities and of the production of collective memory, a topic on which she worked as a research fellow for the French National Agency for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Stéphanie Khoury's work has been supported by French government-sponsored research grants and she is a recipient of the Florence Gould Foundation/Center for Khmer Studies doctoral fellowship (2006), the Quai Branly's Museum doctoral fellowship (2007), and the postdoctoral fellowship from The Laboratory of Excellence Creation, Arts and Heritage (2015), and the Autoritas Program/Paris Sciences et Lettres (2017).

She has served as an advisory board member and elected secretary to the Société Française d'Ethnomusicologie, SFE (2014-2017) and is currently co-chair of the Crossroads Section on Difference and Representation for the Society for Ethnomusicology, SEM.

At Tufts, Stephanie teaches at undergraduate and graduate levels, and is involved in MA thesis supervision and mentorship.

Expertise: Ethnomusicology