The midway assessment is organised in two parts, and starts with a two-hour public seminar, followed by a closed meeting.
The purpose of the midway assessment is to evaluate the progress of the PhD project at a point when it is still possible to make small or more substantial changes.
Programme:
10:15 - 10:40 Welcome, and Presentation by Candidate Daniel Fong
10:45 - 11:45 Comments by, and discussion with Milla Tiainen
11:45 - 12:00 Plenary discussion with the public
Following the public event, there will be a closed meeting between the candidate, invited opponent, and supervisors (12:00 - 12:30).
Summary:
“ Sing like a ‘real’ man!” - Negotiating gender and sexual identity as LGBTQ+ individuals in classical vocal culture
Daniel X Y Fong
This PhD project aims to examine the experiences of LGBTQ+ singers in classical vocal education and investigate how they perform, regulate, and negotiate gender and sexual identities. In doing so, the project adopts a social justice paradigm by addressing the critical gap in research and literature attending to LGBTQ+ classical singers and by ruminating on how queer-inclusive spaces can be engendered in classical vocal practice and industry.
For this project, the scope of the investigation is a Queer Norwegian opera company and a Norwegian higher music institution. Additionally, autoethnographic and ethnographic methods alongside a post-qualitative paradigm are employed to investigate the complex relationship between the LGBTQ+ individual, the materiality of the voice, embodied behaviour codes and meaning. Furthermore, this project adopts the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as foundation to explore how ontological becomings might contribute to the ways conventional opera’s aesthetics might be widened and LGBTQ+ individuals be included on the opera stage.