Allison Chu is a music scholar, educator, and Ph.D. candidate in Music History at Yale University. Her research explores the representation of racialized identities in contemporary musical storytelling and performance cultures, with a focus on American documentary operas written since 2000. 

Allison has taught both as a TF of lecture courses and as a co-instructor of a new seminar at Yale, and she brings previous musical pedagogical experiences as a clarinetist to her current practice. She is dedicated to making musical learning environments more equitable, both in the classroom and beyond. Allison is one of the founding members of the Grant Hagan Society, a graduate student-led affinity group that supports people of color in the Yale Department of Music. On behalf of the society, she was awarded a Teaching Innovation Project grant from the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning to build the web resource, “Diversifying Music Studies,” accessible on GHS’s website. Since 2022, she has served as a McDougal Graduate Teaching Fellow for the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.

Allison also draws on her pedagogical experience in public musicological efforts such as guest lectures for the Connecticut SummerFest and dramaturgical articles for Boston Lyric Opera, and she has developed and facilitated arts entrepreneurship curricula as one of the founding members and Artistic Board President of the Midnight Oil Collective.