Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts
July 10, 2014 - 5:38 pm
Skylight Room (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
Rafael Rojas, Princeton University Global Scholar
Ana Maria Hernández, LaGuardia Community College
Raúl Rubio, John Jay College, CUNY
Jerry Carlson, The City College of New York and Graduate Center
Mauricio Font, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies
Araceli Tinajero, The City College of New York and Graduate Center
This handbook explores key themes in the current debate about Cuba’s contemporary cultural and historical dynamics. Leading academics from Cuba, the United States, and Europe bring to light significant revisions of the artistic and literary canon and the historical archive, and they reconsider often neglected subjects and dynamics in historiography as well as contemporary affairs. The book includes new studies on contentious mobilization, leftist activism, and youth organizations in the pre-revolutionary republic. Current analyses include the relation between the Cuban state and intellectuals; institutional legitimation processes; the formation and reconstruction of national identity discourses; and new framings of gender, race, and sexual orientation. The book illuminates the growing salience of social issues and changes in music, literature, cinema, and theater, thus fostering a fuller understanding of historical and current social dynamics of a Cuba in transformation today.