black and white portrait of non-binary person smiling. They are wearing striped cat-eye glasses, dangling silver earrings

Julian Grey

I’m an (ethno)musicologist specializing in the sound world(s) of drag, popular music, trans studies, film, and digital studies. I’m a practice-driven scholar, actively working as a drag artist and photographer. I completed my PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. PRONOUNS: They/Them


DISSERTATION: Non-Binary Drag: A Trans Musicology of Sensation and Interperformativity


UPCOMING (TBD):

“Sounding Out Loud: Haptic Aurality and Gender Euphoria in Non-Binary Drag” (journal article)

“Living Loud, or Why There's No Gender on the Moon" essay in the edited volume Name / Understand / Play: Reflecting on Metaphors in Music and Sound

2024: Living Loud, educational digital drag “short film” and discussion guide, supported by multiple competitive grants

RECENT AWARDS:

  • 2024 Louise E. Cuyler Prize in Musicology for Best Dissertation Chapter for “Living Life, Living Loud: Affective Transmission of Trans* Euphoria”

  • 2023-2024 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Award - University of Michigan

  • 2020 Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award (Israel) [cancelled due to COVID-19]

RECENT PRESENTATIONS:

2023:

  • “LGBTQ+ Censorship and Public Spaces: A Drag Conversation-Recital,” Organized Roundtable Performance-Discussion, Society for Ethnomusicology

  • “Re/Mediating the Drag Narrative: Gender Euphoria in Live-Streamed Short Videos,” ICTM Study Group on Audiovisual Ethnomusicology, Cork, Ireland

  • “Performing Through the Mirror: Trans Drag on Twitch,” Music and the Internet, University of Chicago

2022:

  • “Drag Kings, Queens, and Non-Binary Monarchs: Haptic Aurality and Anti-Misogyny in Tel Avivi Nightclubs,” Society for Ethnomusicology Joint Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA

(see c.v. for more complete list)