David King Dunaway

Dr. David King Dunaway is Professor of English and Communications (adjunct) at the University of New Mexico, Department of English. He is Pete Seeger's official biographer, and a national expert on oral history, folk music, and Route 66.

Books

Dr. Dunaway's first book, How Can I Keep From Singing, the biography of folk musician and social activist Pete Seeger, was based on his doctoral dissertation, and first released in 1981. Since then, it has been translated into Japanese and Spanish, and been through six printings. Dr. Dunaway, working with Pete Seeger, recently completed a revised, updated version of the biography out March 18, 2008 from Villard Books/Random House.

In addition, Dr. Dunaway is also the editor of Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (with Willa Baum; second edition, Sage, 1996), and the author of Huxley in Hollywood (Harper Collins 1990), Writing the Southwest (with Sarah Spurgeon, revised edition, University of New Mexico Press 2003), Aldous Huxley Recollected (Sage/Altamira 1998), Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story (in press), and Oral History on Route 66: A Manual (National Park Service, 2005).

Radio series

David Dunaway has been active in radio since 1972, when he produced “Midnight Country” for KPFA-FM in Berkeley. Three of his radio documentary series were developed in conjunction with his writing – “Writing the Southwest” (1995) developed with funding from the NEH and the Humanities Endowments in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico; “Aldous Huxley's Brave New Worlds” (1998) funded by the California and New Mexico Endowments for the Humanities and Public Radio International; and “Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story” (2001) which received awards from the Broadcast Educations Association and the Associated Press. He is currently a DJ for KUNM-FM in Albuquerque, NM.

Magazine and journal articles

Dr. Dunaway has written extensively for the so-called mainstream media since 1973, with articles on music, social activism, Route 66, Pete Seeger, and oral history appearing in venues from Mother Jones to the Village Voice and the New York Times. In 2004, his article on the Danish government's efforts to derail the world's oldest experiment in anarchy, Christiania, was carried by the San Francisco Chronicle and National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

Dr. Dunaway also writes extensively for academic audiences, contributing regularly to journals such as the Oral History Review and The Public Historian, the Journal of American Folklore, Southwestern American Literature, and New Media and Society.

Current projects

Dr. Dunaway works with the National Park Service's Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program. After a three-year research project locating, identifying, and cataloguing archives on Route 66 history, with a particular focus on oral history collections, he's now interviewing Route 66's top historians. He has recently completed an anthology, A Route 66 Companion and a memoir, Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story; and is rewriting Pete Seeger's biography, How Can I Keep From Singing. Dr. Dunaway is Professor of English and Communications (adjunct) at the University of New Mexico.

External Links

Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing? A Radio Documentary Series
Official Random House page for How Can I Keep From Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger
David Dunaway - BookTour
The Dunaway Collection of Interviews with Pete Seeger and his Contemporaries - The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
David Dunaway - University of New Mexico Faculty Page
Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story
Writing the Southwest: A Radio Documentary Series