Brian Eugenio Herrera is, by turns, a writer, teacher and scholar presently based (and forever rooted) in New Mexico. His work, both academic and creative, explores the historical formation of gender, sexual and racial identities within U.S. popular entertainment and performance. Brian Eugenio Herrera holds degrees from Brown University, the University of New Mexico and Yale University, where he earned his PhD in American Studies (Dissertation: “Latin Explosion: Latinos, Racial Formation and Twentieth Century U.S. Popular Performance”). Brian’s scholarly work has been awarded fellowship recognition from the Ford Foundation, the Smithsonian Institute, and the John Randolph & Dora Haynes Foundation.
Brian has published essays or reviews in an array of publications, including Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Ecumenica, Comparative Drama and The Gay and Lesbian Review; he also served as Guest Editor for a special section of The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Brian was also recently elected as a member of the Executive Committees for the American Society for Theatre Research and for the Modern Language Associaton’s Drama Division.
As a theatre director, Brian is an alumnus of The Drama League of New York’s Directors Project (Fall Directing Program), has served as Artistic Associate with New York’s Three Dollar Bill Theatre, and has worked at such theatres as Mark Taper Forum/Taper Too!, Manhattan Punchline, Circle Rep, Playwright’s Horizons, and Albuquerque’s Blackout Theatre. In 2007, Brian joined the faculty of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in World Theatre History and Performance Theory.
At UNM, Brian has been recognized three times by The Project For New Mexico Graduates of Color as recipient of an Outstanding Faculty Member Award and, in 2010, the Weekly Alibi annual reader’s poll named Brian Albuquerque’s “Best Post-Secondary School Professor or Instructor.” Most recently, Brian wrote his first autobiographical one-man show, I Was the Voice of Democracy, which premiered as part of SoloFest2010 at Albuquerque’s The Filling Station and has subsequently been seen at performance spaces in Taos, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Lawrence (KS), and New York City.