Cuba Project Fellows

Jerry Carlson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a specialist in narrative theory, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas, Professor Carlson is Coordinator of Critical Studies in the Film & Video Program at The City College and a member of the doctoral faculty in Film Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. His current research focuses on how slavery and its legacy in the New World have been represented in cinema. An Emmy nominated Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created and produces the series CITY CINEMATHEQUE about film history, CANAPE about French-American cultural relations, and NUEVA YORK (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City.

Raquel Chang-Rodríguez (Ph.D., New York University), is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic literature and culture at The Graduate Center and The City College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Among her recent books and editions are: La palabra y la pluma en ‘Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno’ (2005), and a collection of essays, Beyond Books and Borders: Garcilaso de la Vega and ‘La Florida del Inca’ / Franqueando fronteras: Garcilaso de la Vega and ‘La Florida del Inca’ (2006), that has appeared simultaneously in English (Bucknell UP) and Spanish (Catholic University of Peru). Chang-Rodríguez is the founding editor of the prize-winning journal Colonial Latin American Review; she was awarded a National Endowment Fellowship (NEH), and has received research grants from public agencies and private foundations in the United States. She is Profesora Honoraria of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and serves as board member of several publications.

Margaret E. Crahan (Ph.D., Columbia University) is the Dorothy Epstein Professor of Latin American History at Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.   From 1982-1994 she was the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Power and Political Process at Occidental College.  She currently is Vice President of the Interamerican Institute of Human Rights.  She has done research on topics spanning the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries in Latin American and has published over one hundred articles and books.

Sujatha Fernandes (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is assistant professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York. Her research interests include the politics of art; the interconnections of gender, race, and class; state-society relations; and the role of culture in social movements; with an area focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the author of Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (2006). She is currently working on two books: In the Spirit of Negro Primero: Urban Social Movements in Chávez's Venezuela, and a memoir, Close to the Edge: Reflections on Race, Politics, and Global Hip Hop.

Mario Gonzalez-Corzo is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Lehman College of The City University of New York, CUNY, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in international economics and finance. In addition to his teaching experience, Dr. Gonzalez-Corzo conducts a variety of seminars and presentations on economic reforms in transition economies, international trade, and the impact of globalization on developing economies. Dr. Gonzalez-Corzo has conducted research and written in professional journals on various aspects of the Cuban economy.  His research interests and areas of specialization include Cuba’s post-Soviet economic developments, the role of remittances in the Cuban economy, and Cuba’s banking sector. In the private sector, Dr. Gonzalez-Corzo has provided consulting, strategic, and investment advice to global banks and insurance companies in the US, Europe, and Latin America, and has worked with institutional clients to manage their risk exposure in Latin America and other emerging markets throughout the world. His long career in the financial services industry includes senior roles and functions at major firms such as: MetLife, Inc., Pricewaterhouse Coopers, L.L.P., and JP Morgan Chase.

Ted Henken (Ph.D., Tulane University) is assistant professor of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. He recently published the comprehensive reference work, Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook (2007), and he is currently working on a second book with Canadian Economist Archibald Ritter about the development of micro-enterprise and the underground economy in socialist Cuba. He has published articles about Cuba in the journals Cuban Studies, Latin American Research Review, Latino Studies, Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, and Cuba in Transition. He is frequently interviewed by leading newspapers and media outlets on Cuba, having been a consultant for CNN and the U.S. Department of State. 

Ana María Hernández (Ph.D., New York University) specializes in Caribbean and River Plate studies and teaches Latin American Literature and Culture at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. Her publications have focused on Julio Cortázar, Horacio Quiroga, Julio Herrera y Reissig, Felisberto Hernández and Antonio Benítez Rojo. She has been part of the reviewing staff of World Literature Today since 1977. She received a Focus Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003 to explore "The African Roots of Latin Music." Her recent research has focused on the influence of film techniques on contemporary Latin American fiction.

Kathleen López (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is assistant professor of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman, College, City University of New York. She published the article "'One Brings Another': The Formation of Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Migrant Communities in Cuba," in The Chinese in the Caribbean, edited by Andrew R. Wilson (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004). She is currently working on a book manuscript that traces the experiences of the Chinese in Cuba from their arrival as indentured laborers in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In addition to Cuban social history, her broader research and teaching interests include postemancipation Caribbean societies, race and ethnicity in the Americas, and the history of the Chinese diaspora.

Alfonso W. Quiroz (Ph.D., Columbia University), a specialist in Latin American, Caribbean and world history, teaches at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His teaching and scholarly interests cover Latin American and Caribbean colonial and modern history, economic history and policies, and Cuban and Peruvian history. He is co-editor and co-author of Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz (2005) and The Cuban Republic and José Martí: Reception and Uses of a National Symbol (2006). He is also the author of three books and numerous articles and chapters on Peruvian colonial and modern credit, and Cuban nineteenth-century corruption, education, and socioeconomic repression. His most recent book, Corrupt Circles: A History of Systemic Graft in Peru, will be published soon. He is currently working on a history of civil society and reformism in Cuba.

Peter Roman is a professor of political science in the Behavioral/Social Sciences Department at Hostos Community College and a member of the doctoral faculty in the Political Science Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is author of numerous articles, chapters and books on the Cuban government including People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government (2003); "Electing Cuba's National Assembly Deputies," in European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies; "The Lawmaking Process in Cuba," in Socialism and Democracy; and "The National Assembly and Political Representation," in Cuban Socialism in a New Century ( 2004).

Araceli Tinajero (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is assistant professor of Foreign Languages at Literature at City College, City University of New York. She is the author of El lector de tabaqueria: historia de una tradición cubana (2007), which received honorary mention from Premio Casa de las Américas 2006, and Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano (2004). Her most recent publications are a book chapter in The Latin American Fashion Reader, a book article in Cuba: un siglo de literatura (1902-2002) and articles in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas and Revista Iberoamericana (2006). Her areas of interest are interdisciplinary approaches to Latin American, Spanish and U.S. literature in comparative perspective and literary criticism. At the present time she is writing a book on Mexican intellectual Alfonso Reyes.