Event Detail

Nadine Hubbs

"'Country Mexicans': Sounding Mexican American Life, Love, and Belonging in Country Music"

Country music is widely associated with whiteness and particularly the white working class, but not all country fans are Anglo Americans. The Country Music Association has identified Latinxs as one of its fastest-growing fan sectors, and most of these are Mexican Americans. At a time when race, ethnicity, and immigration are at the forefront of national debates, their engagements bear heightened interest.

Professor Hubbs is a guest of Integrative Studies Focus, MUS 205.

Please click on the image on the left for Professor Hubbs' full biography.

Professor Nadine Hubbs' research focuses on gender and queer studies, 20th- and 21st-century U.S. culture, and social class in popular and classical music. Her writings have treated topics including Leonard Bernstein, tonal modernism, 1970s disco, Morrissey, Radiohead, and country music. Her award-winning first book, The Queer Composition of America’s Sound (University of California Press, 2004), asks how a circle of gay composers around Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson managed to become architects of American identity during the nation's most homophobic period. Her latest book, Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (University of California Press, 2014), combines musicological, social, and historical perspectives on American country music to historicize and challenge current constructions of the working-class homophobe. Her current book project is Country Mexicans: Sounding Mexican American Life, Love, and Belonging in Country Music. She is professor of women’s studies and music and faculty affiliate in American culture at the University of Michigan, where she also directs the Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative.