Dr. Finnie D. Coleman is the Director of American Literary Studies n the Department of English at the University of New Mexico where he teaches courses in African American literature and culture.He has served as Interim Dean of University College and Director of Africana Studies. At Texas A&M University Dr. Coleman served as the Director for Honors in the Office of Honors Programs and Academic Scholarships. Prior to his career in academia, Dr. Coleman served as an Army Intelligence Officer during the Persian Gulf War in Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. He is married to UNM’s Dr. Doris Careaga Coleman. They have two children, Anele and Finnie.
The University of New Mexico’s Department of Music and the College of Fine Arts welcomes Dr. Coleman to Keller Hall as he discusses a closing chapter from his book manuscript Visible Rhythms. Music from Janelle Monae, Kendrick Lamar, and Brother Ali set the stage for a discussion of Hip Hop Activism, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and Coleman’s chapter titled “Navigating the Mythologies of Postraciality; Race, Identity, and Underground Hip Hop Culture.”
Dr. José Luis Hurtado awarded prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
Composer and pianist José Luis Hurtado, an associate professor in The University of New Mexico’s Department of Music in the College of Fine Arts, is one of the 2020 winners of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
You Can’t Tell It Like I Can: Black Women, Music, and the Struggle for Social Justice in America
This lecture/performance explores how black women have used music as a method of shaping the public rhetoric and sentiment surrounding the black civil rights struggle in America. Through a historical framework that moves through the height of the abolitionist movement, the Popular front during the 1930s and 1940s, the frontlines of the direct action campaigns of the 1960s, and the proliferation of the Black Power movement in the 1970s.
An Americanish Songbook: Linda Ronstadt’s “other” Country
This talk will consider performances and recordings by singer Linda Ronstadt to propose what I refer to as her Americanish musical songbook. The suffix “ish” here intends to accentuate the “somewhat” or “to some extent” of “American” that Ronstadt—Tucson born and raised—lived and sonically imagined through her extraordinary musical career.