Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan  Book Talk with Meredith Schweig In-person and online  *Registration Requested  On Thursday May 16 from 3:30 to 5pm in Thompson 317 and online, Professor Meredith Schweig, Emory University, will discuss her latest book Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan.   Renegade Rhymes invites readers into Taiwan’s vibrant underground hip-hop scene to explore the social, cultural, and political dynamics of life in a post-authoritarian democracy. Beginning in the immediate aftermath of martial law (1949-1987), the book follows Taiwan’s earliest rappers and DJs as they critiqued the island’s political system, spun tales from their perspectives as members of marginalized ethnic communities, and reimagined previously suppressed local musical forms. A series of ethnographic and historical chapters trace an arc between these earliest interventions and the innovations of present-day musicians, who grapple with ongoing existential uncertainty imposed by the island’s ambiguous geopolitical status and accelerating neoliberalization. The book argues that rap artists past and present configure post-authoritarianism as a creative political intervention, whose ultimate objective is the reordering of epistemic hierarchies, power structures, and gender relations.  Register

 Meredith Schweig completed her MA and PhD in ethnomusicology at Harvard University, where she also received her BA in Music and East Asian Studies. Schweig is currently an associate professor of ethnomusicology at Emory University. Renegade Rhymes was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022, and she is currently working on a second book which explores questions about vocality, agency, and transmedia storytelling through a study of global pop icon Teresa Teng. This event was made possible by the generous support of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.