Date of event: Thursday November 14, 2019
Time and Location: 2:00-3:30pm, LAII Conference Room
Description: In New Spain, an institutional structure of merit and promotion hinged on the idea of reason as an intrinsically European attribute. This attribute differentiated ‘Europeans’ from people of mixed race claiming European status based on their skin complexion. Given the affective impulses permeating ideas about reason in New Spain, this paper considers reason in light of musico-phenomenological strategies that racialized subjects used to re-write their bodies. Such process problematizes the philosophical purview of the Enlightenment’s civilizing mission, and the historical narrative of its political project.
Biography: The work of Professor Jesús Ramos-Kittrell analyzes the relationship of cultural phenomena to the socio-political structures that organize and co-produce them. Such processes interrogate power asymmetries affecting issues of social, political, and cultural representation. His published work covers the early modern period in the Americas and more current cultural analyses of globalization. Previously, Dr. Ramos-Kittrell has served as joint faculty of musicology, ethnomusicology and Latin American Studies, at Tulane University and Southern Methodist University. He is currently assistant professor in residence of musicology at the University of Connecticut.
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Sponsors: The University of New Mexico Department of Music and The Latin American and Iberian Institute
UNM Faculty Take Music and Collaboration to Europe
UNM faculty members Aaron Jacobs and Tatiana Shustova traveled to the Netherlands and Finland for a week of international performances, presentations, and collaboration, including sessions at the European String Teachers Association conference in Helsinki and a chamber music performance with Finnish musicians.
Christian M. Newman Published a New Music History and Music Appreciation eBook
Christian M. Newman, a lifelong New Mexican composer, historian, and college course designer, has published the eBook, Music Essentials from the Western Classical Tradition: Middle Ages to the Present (First Edition) with Cognella Academic Publications, ©2027. Newman developed and authored this work as a music lecturer with the University of New Mexico’s department of music, and department of theatre & dance between 2016 and 2026.
UNM strings faculty sign historic agreement with Chinese Conservatory
University of New Mexico string faculty members Carmelo de los Santos, professor of violin and Christoph Wagner, assistant professor of cello and head of strings, traveled to China recently to formalize a landmark international partnership between the UNM College of Fine Arts and the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music (ZJCM), one of China’s leading institutions for higher music education.


