Professor in Residence
It is a privilege to serve as the first Professor-in-Residence of Tulane University's first residential college. I feel an affinity to this model of academic life due in part to my experience as an undergraduate at the Colorado College, a small liberal arts college with a strong commitment to educating and mentoring students both inside and outside of the classroom. It was at the Colorado College in the 1980s that I developed an interest in Latin American history, literature, and culture. During my junior year I studied for a semester in Guanajuato, Mexico and then traveled to Brazil where I learned Portuguese and began to engage with the rich cultural traditions of the largest and most diverse nation of Latin America.
Following graduation in 1987, I returned to Brazil for a year and a half, this time supported by a Watson Fellowship. During this extended stay, I lived in Salvador, Bahia and developed a research project on contemporary Afro-Brazilian culture, focusing especially on popular music. After returning to my home in the Chicago area I resolved to develop my passion for Brazil in graduate school. In 1990 I initiated graduate study at Brown University, home to the only academic department in the U.S. that is entirely dedicated to Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.
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| Professor Christopher Dunn, Department of Spanish and Portuguese |
In 1992 I returned to Brazil to co-produce a radio program about a watershed cultural movement of the 1960s known as Tropicália for the nationally syndicated show "Afropop Worldwide." I interviewed some of the greatest musical artists of Brazil, including the current Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, and Tom Zé. This radio documentary would develop into a dissertation and then later into a book, Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2001.
In 1996 I was hired to teach at Tulane University with a joint appointment in Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Program in African and African Diaspora Studies. Tulane University has been an ideal place for me to develop my intellectual pursuits among a community of faculty and student colleagues with intersecting interests. I've forged strong ties with the internationally renowned Stone Center for Latin American Studies, one of the flagship academic programs of the university. In 1999, I co-founded the Brazilian Studies Council, which promotes the interdisciplinary study of Brazil at Tulane University. Upon returning from a sabbatical year in Brazil, where I conducted research on a second book project, I was elected to serve as department chair of Spanish and Portuguese.
As I enter into my final year of my tenure as chair, I'm excited to take on the new challenge of serving as Tulane's first Professor-in-Residence. I believe that it will be a wonderful experience for my family too. My wife, Ladee Hubbard, is a specialist in African-American Theater and Performance who is currently developing several writing projects, both fiction and non-fiction. We have a four-year old daughter, Isa, who will begin kindergarten at Lusher in the fall, and a son, Joaquin, who was born in January of this year.
Christopher Dunn
