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Office: Humanities 419
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Phone:
277-6356
Email: gabriel@unm.edu

A. GABRIEL MELÉNDEZ
Professor and Chair of American Studies

Professor Meléndez is a literary, social and cultural critic with research interests in ethnic and cultural representations in film, autobiography, ethnopoetics and ethnocritical theory. His teaching and research interests overlap across three American Studies concentrations Culture Studies, Southwest Studies and Race, Class and Ethnicity. He has been the recipient of a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship and several other research grants including awards from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities, Center for Regional Studies (UNM) and the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project (University of Houston).

His first book, So All is Not Lost:  The Poetics of Print in Nuevomexicano Communities,  1836-1958 (UNM, 1997)  has recently been reprinted by the University of Arizona under the title,  Spanish-Language Newspapers in New Mexico, 1836-1958 (2005).  In addition, he is co-editor of The Multicultural Southwest:  A Reader  (Arizona, 2001) and Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage: Volume VI  (2006).  His other works include Reflexiones del Corazón (1993) [a portfolio of images and texts produced with Miguel Gandert and María Baca for the Tamarind Institute] and The Biography of Casimiro Barela (UNM, 2003).

The author of several articles and chapter-length studies, Meléndez is currently engaged in new work on ethnic film representations and readying a new manuscript, “Film Dramas in New Mexico:  Cultural Encounters On and Off the Screen” for publication.   Meléndez is on the board of directors of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, serves on the editorial board of the journal Confluence, is a general editor for the Pasó por aquí Series on New Mexican Hispanic Letters at UNM Press.

In the spring of 2006 he presented papers at The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain and was invite to lecture at the University of Las Palmas on the Canary Islands.   As one of three scholars invited to participate in Lasting Impressions: The Private Presses of New Mexico, an educational project sponsored by the Office of the State Historian Meléndez put together “Ancestor Words”(see accompanying text) a program presented at the Mesilla Cultural Center in La Mesilla, New Mexico and later at the National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico in Albuquerque. 

Meléndez teaches graduate seminars on autobiography and ethnic life writing, Latino/a-Chicano/a film, critical regionalism and the politics of identity in the Southwest.

Publications

The Pasó por Aquí Series: Recovering the Nuevomexicano Literary Heritage (UNM, 2011)

Books:

So All is Not Lost: The Poetics of Print in Nuevomexicano Communities, 1836-1958 (UNM, 1997)
The Multicultural Southwest: A Reader (Arizona, 2001)
The Biography of Casimiro Barela (UNM, 2003)
Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage: Volume VI
(Arte Público, 2006)

Selected Articles:

“Who are the ‘salt of the earth’? Competing Images of Mexican Americans in Salt of the Earth and And Now, Miguel” in Expressing Culture: Essays on Nuevomexicana/o Creativity, Everyday Ritual, and Oppositional Remembrance, Phillip Gonzales, editor, (forthcoming, University of Arizona Press)

“Nuevo México by Any Other Name: Creating a State from an Ancestral Homeland,” in Contested Homeland: A Chicano History of New Mexico, David Maciel and Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, editors

University of New Mexico Press, 2000: 143-168.

Recent Talks:

“Ancestor Words: Recovering the Nuevomexicano Literary Legacy,” Mesilla Cultural Center in La Mesilla, New Mexico on July 14, 2006 and National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 22, 2006.

“Ejemplos Metafóricos”: Reconsiderations on the Origins of Chicana Autobiography and Life-Narrative,” University of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain, May 25, 2006.

“Post-1848 Mexicano Life-Narratives as Symbolic Biography:  The Biography of Casimiro Barela,” 5th MESEA Conference, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, May 20, 2006.

Courses

AM ST 508 Seminar in Cultural Autobiography
AM ST 560 Seminar on the Southwest: A Critical Region
AM ST 363/563 Chicano/Latino Film.

 

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