Associate Professor
Youn KIM earned her PhD in music theory from Columbia University. Her research integrates music theory, intellectual history, and music psychology, investigating how musical experience is conceptualized across disciplines.
Her monograph, Body and Force in Music: Metaphoric Constructions in Music Psychology (Routledge, 2023), was published in the SEMPRE Studies in the Psychology of Music series. She also co-edited and contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body (2019). She is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Music and the Cognitive Humanities (Oxford University Press, in press). Her earlier monograph, History of Western Music Theory (2006), was awarded “Outstanding Books in the Field of Basic Sciences” by the National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Korea (2008).
Her work appears in journals across musicology and music psychology, including Journal of Musicology, Psychology of Music, and Journal of Musicological Research, as well as in interdisciplinary scientific venues such as Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE, and Frontiers in Neuroscience.
She serves on the editorial board of Music & Science and served as Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Musicological Society’s Regional Association for East Asia (IMSEA, 2022–2025)
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2026Music and the Cognitive Humanities: Interdisciplinary Insights, coedited with Andrea Schiavio and Jonna Vuoskoski. Music as Art and Science series.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press. -
2023Body and Force in Music: Metaphoric Constructions in Music Psychology. SEMPRE Studies in the Psychology of Music series. London and New York: Routledge.
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2019The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, coedited with Sander Gilman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2006History of Western Music Theory. Seoul: Simsuldang.
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2026“Sketches for a Cultural History of Music Cognition Research.” Coauthored with Psyche Loui and Kyung Myun Lee. In Music and the Cognitive Humanities: Interdisciplinary Insights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
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2026“Attention in Musical Action: Theories of Attention in Early Music Psychology and Piano Pedagogy.” In The Attentive Ear: Sound, Cognition, and Subjectivity, 1800–1930, edited by Carmel Raz and Francsca Brittan. Sound in History series. Under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press, in press.
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2019“Contextualizing Music and the Body: An Introduction.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, edited by Youn Kim and Sander L. Gilman, 1-18, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2019“Listening to the Musicking Body: A Cross-Disciplinary and Historical Perspective.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, edited by Youn Kim and Sander L. Gilman, 418-435. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2019“Is There Disabled Music? Music and the Body From Dame Evelyn Glennie’s Perspective.” Coauthored with Evelyn Glennie and Sander Gilman. In The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, edited by Youn Kim and Sander L. Gilman, 318-330. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2010“Interdisciplinarity and Metaphors: Historical Reflections on Music Theory and the Psychology of Music.” In Musiktheorie als interdisziplinäres Fach, edited by Christian Utz, 577–588. Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag. ISBN: 978-3-89727-448-8
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2005"Theory, Analysis and Analytic Theory." In Music Theory and Analysis, ed. by Youn Kim, 13–54. Seoul: Simsuldang.
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2005"Perception and Cognition of Rhythm: Metric Structure and Grouping Structure." In Music Perception and Cognition I, ed. by Suk Won Yi, 183–216. Seoul: Eumaksekye.
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2003"Elliot Carter." In 20th-century Composers, ed. by Suk Won Yi and Hee Sook Oh, 203–244. Seoul: Eumaksekye.
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2026“Resonance in Piano Fingering: Interplay of Action and Observation in Playing Scale Passages from Beethoven’s Piano Works.” Psychology of Music, doi.org/10.1177/03057356251395001.2025“Piano Fingering and the Embodied Expression of Bodily Effort.” Journal of Musicological Research, 44, no.1 (2025): 72–99.2021“Music Psychology of the Piano-Playing Hands in Historical Discourse.” Journal of Musicology 38, no. 1 (2021): 38–66.2020“Increased Fronto-Temporal Connectivity by Modified Melody in Real Music.” Coauthored with Chan Hee Kim, Jaeho Seol, Seung-Hyun Jin, June Sic Kim, Suk Won Yi, and Chun Kee Chung. PLOS ONE 15, no. 7: e02357702019“Eye-Hand Span Is Not an Indicator of but a Strategy for Proficient Sight-Reading in Piano Performance.” Coauthored with Yeoun Lim, Jeong Mi Park, Seung-Yeon Rhyu, Chun Kee Chung, and Suk Won Yi. Scientific Reports 9, no. 1: 17906.2019“Change in Left Inferior Frontal Connectivity with Less Unexpected Harmonic Cadence by Musical Expertise.” Coauthored with Chan Hee Kim, June Sic Kim, Yun Hee Choi, Jeong-Sug Kyong, Suk Won Yi, and Chun Kee Chung. PLOS ONE 14 (11): e0223283.2014“‘Boundaries’ and ‘Thresholds’: Conceptual Models of the Musical Mind in the History of Music Psychology." Psychology of Music 42, no. 5, 671–691.
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2013“‘The Voice in Silence’: Hugo Riemann’s Pausenlehre and Its Psychological Implications.” Journal of Musicological Research 32, no. 4, 287–313.
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2006"The Multi-level Structure of Schumann's Song Cycles, Opp. 24 and 39." Journal of Music and Theory 11: 169–215.
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2006"Ambiguity in the Analysis of Tonal Harmony: Case Studies and Reflections." Journal of the Musicological Society of Korea 9 (3): 169–216.
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2005"The Significance of Speculative Theory of Music: A Case Study of Scientific Metaphors in Music Theories." Journal of the Musicological Society of Korea 8 (2): 57–83.
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2005"Historical Approach to Music Theory: Case Studies." Nangman Quarterly 17 (2): 5–54.
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2024“Book Review: The Science-Music Borderlands: Reckoning with the Past and Imagining the Future, edited by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Psyche Loui, and Deirdre Loughridge (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2023).” Twentieth-century Music. 21, no. 1 (2024): 137–141.
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2024“Book Review: Ernst Kurth, Music Psychology.”Musicae Scientiae 27, no. 3 (2023): 811–819.
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2010"Review of Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Myles W. Jackson." Music & Letters, 431-435.
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2003"Review of Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought by Alexander Rehding." Current Musicology 76: 81–96.