We, Too, Write Rock and Roll

African American Writers and Rock Music, 1970-1983

UToledo's Kimberly Mack, Ph.D., will present on two prominent Black American rock writers--Cynthia Dagnal-Myron and Vernon Gibbs--who wrote during the 1970s and 80s for many publications.

Humanities in Public-Speaker Series
Presented by the UToledo Roger Ray Institute for the Humanities

This presentation focuses on two prominent Black American rock writers--Cynthia Dagnal-Myron and Vernon Gibbs--who wrote during the 1970s and 80s for many publications, including Detroit's legendary CREEM magazine. Prof. Mack's talk will show how their bold writing style disrupted that era's race and gender expectations for what a rock writer (and rock star!) should look like.

Kimberly Mack (PhD UCLA) is an associate professor who specializes in African American literature and culture, twentieth- and twenty-first century ethnic American literature, autobiographical narratives, and American popular music. She’s the author of Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), which won the 2021 College English Association of Ohio’s Nancy Dasher Award. Her in-progress book projects, The Untold History of American Rock Criticism and Living Colour’s Time’s Up (part of the 33 1/3 book series and forthcoming May 2023), are under contract with Bloomsbury. Kimberly’s scholarly and public-facing articles have appeared, or are forthcoming, in African American Review, Popular Music and Society, Journal of Popular Music Studies, AMP: American Music Perspectives, Longreads, No Depression, and elsewhere. Dr. Mack teaches courses on the undergraduate and graduate levels on African American literature and culture, as well as other courses for majors and non-majors, including Writing About Literature; Contemporary Literary Theories and Criticism; and Literature of Postcolonial, Diasporic, and Nonwhite Communities.