Cuban Studies at CUNY: History and Promise

This roundtable is designed to bring out the broadest possible participation, with each panelist providing brief accounts of their past and current work, as well as their thoughts on the promise of Cuban studies at CUNY.

Roundtable Participants:

Kelly Anderson, Hunter College
A recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute (NEA), and the New York State Council on the Arts, Kelly Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College in New York City. She directed the documentary, "Looking for a Space: Lesbians and Gay Men in Cuba."

Jerry Carlson, City College and The Graduate Center
Professor Carlson is a film historian specializing in Cuban and Latin American cinema. In January 2003 he was a visiting professor at the EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television) in San Antonio de los Banos, Cuba. In the past he has produced television interviews with Cuban writers and directors such as Julio Garcia Espinosa, Sergio Giral, and Humberto Solas. In the fall of 2003 he produced and hosted a six part series on CUNY-TV about Cuban cinema.

Margaret E. Crahan, Hunter College and The Graduate Center
Meg Crahan has written extensively on Cuba. Her most recent volume on Cuba is "Religion, Culture, and Society: The Case of Cuba" (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2003), of which she is editor and co-author.

Samuel Farber, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center
Samuel Farber is currently working on the book, Rethinking the Origins of the Cuban Revolution (tentative title, under contract with the University of North Carolina Press). He has written extensively on Cuba, including his Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933-1960.

Mauricio Font, Queens College and The Graduate Center
M. Font's most recent work on Cuba includes Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz (co-editor, forthcoming).

Alfonso García Osuna, Kingsborough Community College
Alfonso Garcia Osuna's most recent work on Cuba is Cuban Filmography, 1897-2001 (London: MacFarland & Co., 2003).

Ted Henken, Baruch College
Ted Henken's recent dissertation on Cuba is "Condemned to Informality: Cuba's Experiments with Self-Employment During the Special Period" (Tulane, May, 2002). He also has an article in "Cuban Studies" (Vol. 33).

Eduardo Lolo, Kingsborough Community College
Professor Lolo will discuss his recent edition of La Edad de Oro (Martí, José. La Edad de Oro. Edición Crítica de Eduardo Lolo. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2001) and his last book on Marti, Después del rayo y del fuego. Acerca de José Martí. (Madrid: Betania, 2003). He will also summarize the work on "estudios martianos" by members of the CUNY faculty during the last quarter of a century (probably the most sustained effort in the United States).

Iraida Lopez, Ramapo College and original coordinator of CUNY-Caribbean Exchange Program
Iraida Lopez is the author of La autobiografia hispana contemporanea en los Estados Unidos: a traves del caleidoscopio (Mellen Press, 2001) on Cuban-American and Latino/Latina autobiography.

Alfonso Quiroz, Baruch College and Graduate Center
Professor Quiroz's most recent work on Cuba is Implicit Costs of Empire: Bureaucratic Corruption in Nineteenth-Century Cuba, Journal of Latin American Studies (2003), Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz (co-editor), Jose Marti and the Cuban Republic (co-editor), and several other studies on Cuban civil society and socioeconomic history.

Peter Roman, Hostos Community College and Graduate Center
In November 2003 Rowman and Littlefield published the updated edition of Peter Roman's "People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government." His article, "The National Assembly and Political Representation" will appear in english in "Cuban Socialism in a New Century: Adversity, Survival and Renewal" (Eds. Max Azicri and Elsie Deal, 2004), as well as in Spanish in TEMAS (Cuba). He was a member of the editorial collective for the Spring-Summer 2001 issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy entitled "Cuba in the 1990's: Economy, Politics, and Society."

Lauren Shaw, Mount Saint Mary College
Lauren Shaw recently completed her dissertation titled, "La nueva trova cubana:una poética y política menor." She received her Ph.D in Hispanic and
Luso-Brazilian Literatures from The Graduate Center.

Araceli Tinajero, City College of New York
Professor Araceli Tinajeros is currently working on a book on reading practices in Cuba, The United States and Spain (but mainly Cuba). Her Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano (Purdue U. Press, 2003) is about to come out (this book deals with Cuba during the Modernista period).

The above specialists have confirmed their presence as of 12/3. Others may join.

For decades, faculty at the City University of New York have been in the forefront of the study and analysis of Cuba, as well as US-Cuba relations, and their list of contributions is considerable. This panel/workshop will undertake an overview of the exciting work that has been done and is being done about Cuba at CUNY.

This panel will also trace the history and promise of Cuban studies at CUNY. Some chapters are better known than others. The University's involvement has been longstanding. In the 1950s and 1960s, faculty members of Cuban descent or recently arrived from the island joined the faculty. After 1959, as is well known, Cuba began to attract a great deal of attention. In the 1970s, members of the faculty began to organize various academic exchange programs. In the 1980s, Professor Frank Bonilla and chancellor Joseph Murphy put together the CUNY-Caribbean Exchange Program (initially called the CUNY-Cuba Scholarly Exchange Program). Administered by the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños and coordinated by Rina Benmayor, Iraida Lopez, and Marta Rodriguez, this program facilitated sustained exchange with the University of Havana in the 1980s. More recently the Cuba Project established in 1996 and the CUBA Seminar have contributed to the development of Cuban studies at CUNY.

The purpose of the December 5th panel is to help establish the history of Cuban studies at CUNY and identify current projects and research. There are exciting developments in the humanities, literature, music, film studies, the social sciences, the performing arts, and other areas. For instance, The Cuba Project/Bildner Center is currently sponsoring a series on New Scenarios for US-Cuba relations.

Through this forum the Bildner Center seeks to better disseminate the fruits of these efforts and current initiatives and to promote greater dialogue and sharing of results. This panel will be devoted to a roundtable discussion by all attendees of historical accounts of past projects and programs, updates on current research, as well as celebrate recent publications, dissertations, and major achievements related to Cuba by CUNY faculty.

When: Friday, December 5, 4:00PM
Where: Room 9206
The Graduate Center
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
New York City
(@34th Street)

To reserve, send e-mail to cubaproject@gc.cuny.edu or leave message at (212) 817-2096. Please, note that registration is required.