Academic Year 2023-2024

"Finding the Sound: The Women of El Paso Punk Rock", is a a presentation by Dr. Tara López, Assistant Professor and Director of the Ethnic Studies program. In López's talk, she will shed light on how women of the El Paso punk rock scene—particularly the Chicanas that dominated punk in the mid-1990s—used music to develop a fierce set of sonic expressions and innovations. By exploring opportunities available in this popular format, López invites us to reconsider how the messages that comprise these "musicworlds" illuminate the wide array of Chicanas engaged in the El Paso punk scene. From girls furtively Xeroxing zines at local Kinko's to mothers hiding their kids' earnings when punk rock shows were busted to girls taking the stage as lead singers of central punk rock bands in the city, their activity was wide-ranging and their commitment to music and community was indefatigable. Dr. López's book, Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press (June 2024).

Dr. Boulton's presentation will take us on a journey through national romanticism and demonstrate how Finland’s national epic poem—Kalevala—has endured through a diverse range of musical expressions. Among the central figures to understanding this cultural work are Jean Sibelius and the Kalevala-inspired suites and symphonies from the late 19^th-to early 20^th-centuries, and Amorphis, Finland’s first death metal band.

By attending to metrical patterns, invocations of oral tradition, and different themes of Kalevala, Dr. Boulton will show how both Sibelius and Amorphis demonstrate the ways divergent styles of music separated by over a century can nevertheless embody and sustain suomaliasuus—the essence of Finnishness. Comparing these different approaches to Finnish identity in romantic movements helps further account for how such expressions inspired Finnish music to become a cultural export in the age of globalization.

Dr. Boulton’s presentation is based on research from a forthcoming book chapter featured in Romanticism and Heavy Metal, edited by James Rovira (2024).