African American Studies
Vodú Chic: Cuba’s Haitian Heritage, the Folkloric Imaginary, and the State by Grete T. Viddal, Harvard University: African and African American Studies Dept., 2014, 288 p. Until relatively recently, the maintenance of Haitian traditions in Cuba was associated with rural isolation and poverty. But today, Cuba’s Haitian communities are increasingly linked with cultural institutes, heritage festivals, music promoters, and the tourism industry. Music, dance, and rituals associated with Vodú have been re-imagined for the public stage. Haitiano-cubanos themselves have found innovative ways to transform the once abject into the now exotic, and are currently gaining a public presence in Cuba through folkloric performance.
Anthropology
Elegba, why am I ill?: Healing and transformation of persons in an Ocha community in Miami, FL by Michelle Christine Albus, SUNY-Buffalo: Anthropology Dept., 2014, 346 p. This dissertation examines the processes of healing and transformation among the Cuban American, white, middle class Orisha worship community in Miami, FL. It focuses on how people who are ill seek embody healing and advice from orishas who are not ill and have the power to heal them. Findings indicate that there are a variety of healing modalities in Orisha worship, each with the aim of manipulating ashe, the divine force in Orisha worship.
The Struggle for a Decent Meal: Household Food Consumption in Santiago de Cuba by Hanna Garth, UCLA: Anthropology Dept. 2014, 274 p. Drawing on 16 months of ethnographic research in 22 households in Santiago de Cuba, I reveal that recent changes in food consumption practices stemming from post-Cold War disintegration of the welfare state are the grounds for reworking longstanding parameters for ethical conduct at the household and community level, which, in turn, influence how individuals see themselves.
Isles of Green: Environmentalism and Agrarian Change in Costa Rica and Cuba by Dana Johanna Graef, Yale University: Anthropology Dept. 382 p. This comparative dissertation examines the intersections between environmentalism and agrarian change in Costa Rica and Cuba, both countries with reputations as “green nations,” and in the latter case, also as opposed to global capitalism. I propose that environmentalism in Latin America has developed in a dialectic relationship with the Global North as both consumer/destroyer and protector/conserver of the natural world.
Schizonomics: Remapping La Habana’s black market by Gabriel Vignoli, The New School: Anthropology Dept., 2014, 341 p. This study, based on 14 months of fieldwork, looks at Havana’s black market and its transformations following structural reforms since 2010. I focus on the effect of private self-entrepreneurship (cuentapropismo) on the changing dynamics of the black market, from an alternative site of socio-economic redistribution into a site of progressive differentiation and polarization.
Con la Mochal al Cuello: The Emergence and Negotiation of Afro-Chinese Religion in Cuba. Martin Tsang. 2014. Global and Sociocultural Studies Dept., Florida International University. Between 1847 and 1874 approximately 142,000 Chinese indentured laborers or coolies migrated to Cuba to work primarily on sugar plantations. Many of the men who survived the harsh conditions formed consensual unions with freed and enslaved women of color. These connections developed not only because the Chinese indentures and Afro-Cubans shared the same living and working spaces, but also because they occupied similar sociocultural, political and economic spheres in colonial society. This ethnography investigates the rise of a discernible Afro-Chinese religiosity that emerged from the coming together of these two diasporic groups.
Art History
Designing Destinations: Hotel Architecture, Urbanism, and American Tourism in Puerto Rico and Cuba by Erica N. Morawski, University of Illinois at Chicago: Art History Dept., 2014, 373 p. This study examines hotel design and their importance in shaping both international relationships and national identities. My project positions the hotels of Havana, Cuba and San Juan, Puerto Rico as primary agents in a complex, multidirectional flow of influence between them and the U.S. Three aspects of hotel design, visually and discursively–the modern, the historic, and the tropical–reveal the tensions in these exchanges and their impact on larger cultural/political contexts.
Revolutionizing Modernities: Visualizing Utopia in 1960s Havana, Cuba, by Alfredo Rivera, Duke University: Art, Art History and Visual Studies Dept., 2015, 495 p. This project examines how Cuba deliberately projected its modernity during the Cold War to the world via architecture and the arts, and how these visual and spatial manifestations speak to the utopic character of modernity within Latin America and the Caribbean.
Communications
Transnational advocacy networks and information politics: INGOs and the collaboration for free speech in Cuba by Katharine R. Allen, Pennsylvania State University: Communications Dept., 2015, 244 p. This project explores how international nongovernmental organizational (INGOs) members of a Transnational Advocacy Network (TAN) use social media to interact with local activists in their advocacy for freedom of speech in Cuba. It shows that the INGOs self-select the information on Cuba that they receive and share through social media, in effect “cherry-picking” the information they utilize in compiling position papers and annual indices, which consistently rank Cuba as one of the lowest of the low in terms of freedom of expression.
Economics
A Reconsideration of Labor Supply of Immigrants and Social Welfare Programs by Yi Zhang, SUNY – Stony Brook: Economics Dept., 2014, 99 p. The dramatic fluctuation in the composition of the immigrant labor force in U.S. in recent years has impacted the labor market experience of recent immigrants, including those from Cuba. In Part I, I examine the labor supply decisions of recent immigrant cohorts near retirement ages. In Part II, I study the economic assimilation of recent immigrants in terms of welfare participation. Results show that Cuban immigrants exceed other source countries in terms of the pace to assimilate out of welfare programs. The longer a Cuban headed household stays in the U.S., the less likely for the whole household to participate in any type of social assistance programs.
Education
Learning Solidarity: Activist pedagogies and transnational knowledge production in Cuban and Iranian diasporic democracy movements by Susan Elizabeth McKibben, UCLA: Education Dept., 2014, 192 p. This study critically examines the digital knowledge production of one Iranian and one Cuban diasporic social movement organization in transnational solidarity with democracy movements. The Cuban case is Adelante, a pro-democracy activist group. This study social movement networks as learning networks in which actors learn, produce knowledge, and teach, engaging in “activist pedagogies.”
In Our Image: The Attempted Reshaping of the Cuban Education System by the United States Government, 1898-1912 by Mario J. Minichino,, University of South Florida: Secondary Education Dept., 2014, 397 p. Immediately following the Spanish American War,new courses were introduced into the K-12 curricula. This study examines who introduced those changes, and what, if any influence those changes brought to the culture of the island. The study finds that a concerted effort was underway to impose a U.S.-styled school system on Cuba.
History
Cubans and the Caribbean South: Race, Labor, and Cuban Identity in Southern Florida 1868–1928 by Andrew Gomez, UCLA: History Dept., 249 p. This dissertation looks at the Cuban cigar making communities of Key West and Ybor City (in present-day Tampa) from 1868 to 1928, two of the largest Cuban exile centers at the time that had critical roles in the Cuban Independence movement and the Clear Havana cigar industry. The earlier period (1868-1898) looks at Southern Florida and Cuba as a permeable region where ideas, people, and goods flowed freely. The second period (1898-1928) examines how union busting and Jim Crow segregation greatly weakened the Cuban communities of Southern Florida.
The double-edged sword: Smallpox vaccination and the politics of public health in Cuba by Stephanie Gonzalez, City University of New York: History Dept., 2014, 208 p. This study tracks the introduction and development of smallpox vaccination in colonial Cuba through the 19th century. Native (creole) medical practitioners utilized smallpox vaccination for securing their status as professionals as well as as for conceptualizing new identities in a colonial slave society. Creole vaccinators initially identified with a colonial state that protected their professional interests as necessary for the maintenance of Cuba’s slave-based, agro-industrial sugar complex. By the end of the 19th century however, professional divestment and ethnic strife convinced fledgling medical professionals in Cuba to mobilize their creole, scientific identities against Spanish colonial rule.
Refugees and relief: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and European Jews in Cuba and Shanghai 1938-1943 by Zhava Litvac Glaser, City University of New York, History Dept., 2015, 353 p. The Jewish communities of Cuba and Shanghai are examples of communal dynamics in a time of catastrophe. Differences in national origin, religious observance, class, age and political views became more pronounced as communities fragmented yet transitory communities were united by thriving cultural, educational and literary pursuits.
Sex and state making in revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1968 by Rachel M. Hynson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: History Dept., 2014, 225 p. This dissertation explores the entwinement of familial health and national security during the first decade of the Cuban revolution, and the normalization of patriarchy. The project maps the role of sexuality in 1960s Cuba and illuminates connections between sexual and sociocultural change.
The Work of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Making of American Colonialisms in Cuba and the Philippines, 1898-1913 by Justin F. Jackson, Columbia University: History Dept., 2014, 456 p. Between 1898 and 1913, the limited manpower and resources of the United States Army forced it to employ thousands of Cubans and Phillippinos to fight in wars as well as in civil administration. The impact of American military labor relations in war and occupation endured well into periods of civilian rule in these countries, shaping the politics of race and immigration, infrastructure development and public obligation, and the civil apparatus of colonial and neo-colonial states.
Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War: Transnational Activism, Networks, and Solidarity in the 1930s by Ariel Mae Lambe, Columbia University: History Dept., 2014, 491 p. The dissertation studies Cuban antifascist individuals, campaigns, organizations, and networks operating transnationally to help the Spanish Republic, contextualizing these efforts in Cuba’s internal struggles of the 1930s. Both transnational solidarity and domestic concerns defined Cuban antifascism.
Manifesting destiny on Cuban shores: Narciso Lopez, Cuban annexation and the path of American Empire, 1800-1859 by Gregg Thomas Lightfoot, Cornell University: History Dept., 2015, 517 p. This dissertation tells the story of the Narciso López’s filibustering attempts in Cuba (1848- 1851) set against the backdrop of long-term American interest in the island.
Baptism by Fire: The Making and Remaking of Madness in Cuba, 1857-1980 by Jennifer Lynn Lambe, Yale University: History Dept., 2014, 488 p. The most famous and, until 1959, the only public psychiatric hospital in Cuba, The Mazorra Mental Hospital has long embodied a complex amalgam of historical processes. By bridging traditionally separated historical epochs, this dissertation engages mental healing and illness to explore the complex layering of social, racial, and high politics in Cuba. It also places the micro-politics of madness in dynamic conversation with the world outside the asylum.
Languages and Literatures
Herederos de la libertad: criminalizacion, liderazgo y escritura de afro-descendientes en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba by Maria Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles, Washington University in St. Louis: Hisp. Lges & Lit. Dept, 2014, 268 p. This dissertation details the efforts and impact of Afro-Latin Americans in the emergence of national print cultures and state formation processes in Colombia, Brazil and Cuba. Afro-descendant intellectuals intended to construct national communities based in social equality, while creole elites tried neutralize them by promoting stereotypes of Afro-Latin Americans as criminals and deviants, while also repressing political opposition.
Arteletra: The politics of going unnoticed in the Latin American sixties by Jason A. Bartles, University of Maryland: Spanish Lang. and Lit. Dept. 2014, 333 p. Focusing on 1960s Latin America, this study examines political and ethical interventions of four authors whose works were overlooked at the time. Calvert Casey (1924-1969), a gay Cuban-American writer, is one of them. Like the others, he imagined new possibilities for political action far from entrenched ideologies, generating views for agonistic, democratizing transformations and epistemologies that exceeded exclusive national and identitarian boundaries.
Compensatory lengthening in the Spanish of Havana, Cuba: Acoustic analyses of word-internal, post-nuclear /l/ and /r/ by Kristin M. Carlson, Purdue University: Lang and Cultures Dept., 2014, 373 p. The gemination of an onset positionally subsequent to the deletion of a syllable-final liquid (generally termed liquid gemination) has been repeatedly claimed yet unsubstantiated as a pervasive characteristic of Cuban Spanish. This study investigated the phenomenon of gemination Havana.
Queer transnationality: Narrative, theatre, and performance across temporal, spatial, and social geographies by Alexandra Gonzenbach Perkins, University of Miami: Spanish Dept., 2014, 255 p. This study investigates the ways narrative, theatre, and performance art negotiate identities across Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the United States, and larger global contexts.
Sea-ing Words: An Exploration of the Maritime in Contemporary Caribbean and Latino/a Literature by Rebeca L. Hey-Colon, Harvard University: Romance Lges and Lit. Dept., 2014, 226 p. Writers from the Spanish-speaking islands and their diaspora have moved past the ever elusive Pan-Antillean quest for unity, rooted in the acceptance of a foundational Trauma. The dissertation analyzes the use of the maritime and the vital role of the sea in Cuba’s balsero literature, among others.
Luso-Hispanic Archipelagos: The Imaginary of Asia in Brazilian and Cuban Literary and Visual Culture by Ana Paulina Lee, University of Southern California: Comparative Lit. Dept., 2014, 173 p. This dissertation analyzes representations of Chinese culture and immigration in Brazilian and Cuban literary and visual cultural production. As I trace the presence of the “mandarin” and “coolie” in Brazilian and Cuban literary and visual culture, I argue that these figures enable writers and visual artists to contemplate new forms of citizenship and freedom.
Reading for Opacity in Queer Latinidad by Christina A. Leon, Emory University: Comparative Lit. Dept., 2014,163 p. This dissertation conceptualizes a queer, Latina/o ethics of reading in literature, art, and theory. I first articulate opacity as an ethical approach that thwarts the representative logic of visibility and identity. Second, I show how Latina/o writers and artists work through what an opaque aesthetic that resists restrictive notions of latinidad. One chapter focuses on Ana Mendieta and Tania Bruguera.
Confessing exile: Revolution and redemption in the narratives of the Cuban (re)encuentro by Jenna Rose Leving Jacobson, University of Chicago: Romance Lges and Lit Dept., 2014, 369 p. This dissertation tells the story of the first official (re)encuentro between Cuban exiles and their homeland during the Revolution, and the confessional narratives that emerged. “Confession” was the primary rhetorical mode, and was rooted in the subjects’ desire to express an authentic, national identification and as such, redeem their belonging in the national community as well as their place within revolutionary history in particular.
Conflict in La Habana: Foreign tyranny and national revolution in Havana-centric cubanidad by Lourdes M. Molina, University of Texas at Dallas: Literature Dept., 2015, 243 p. This Cuban imagination conceives of Havana as both the battlefield of the nation’s fight for independence and the cradle of cubanidas. This comes through in several texts from 1882-2002; namely: Cirilo Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés (1882), Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring La Habana: Apuntes históricos (1939), Edmundo Desnoes Memorias del subdesarrollo (1965), and Abilio Estévez Palacios distantes (2002).
Paris and Havana: A Century of Mutual Influence by Laila Pedro, City University of New York: French Dept., 2014, 265 p. This dissertation traces the history of exchange and influence between Cuban, French, and Francophone Caribbean artists in the 20th century within the greater context of 20th century modernisms, particularly Surrealism.
Celia Cruz, Ícono Global de la Salsa: Africania, Nostalgia, y Carnaval by Caridad M. Rodriguez Torres, Arizona State University: Latin American Lit. Dept., 2014, 218 p. This dissertation investigates the life and career of singer Celia Cruz and her cultural legacy.
En los umbrales de la tardomodernidad: Transformaciones discursivas en cinco novelas del Caribe insular by Mirna Trauger, Rutgers: Spanish Lang. Dept. 2015, 305 p. This dissertation analyzes five Hispanic Caribbean novels after 1969, includes chapters on Miguel Barnet and Severo Sarduy. Through a focus on language, on the relationship between history and fiction, on collective memory, and on the body, the author aims to show that their novels straddle both modernism and postmodernism.
Recreando la imagen literaria de la mujer afrodescendiente en las narrativas femeninas afrocubanas y afrobrasileñas contemporáneas by Luciana da Trindades Prestes, University of Tennessee-Knoxville: Modern Foreign Lang. Dept., 2015, 179 p. This dissertation explores the transformation of black femininity through self-representation, by analyzing four contemporary narratives from Brazil and Cuba. In those, female voices and characters destabilize conventional roles assigned to black women by portraying empowering images, and in so doing they reinscribe black womanhood and take control of their own (hi)stories
Re-Humanizing the Alien: Estranged Masculinities in Cuban Existentialist Fiction by Francis David Watlington, University of Texas at Austin: Spanish and Portuguese Dept., 2015, 280 p. This dissertation examines the role of alienation in the construction of compensatory masculine subjectivities during the social, cultural and industrial modernization of Cuba, from the mid-19th to the mid 20th centuries. The study analyzes the works of the following Cuban authors: José Antonio Saco, Juan Francisco Manzano, Enrique Labrador Ruiz, Virgilio Pillera, Edmundo Desnoes and Calvert Casey.
Latin American Studies
Amateur Citizens: Culture and Democracy in Contemporary Cuba by Paloma Duong, Columbia University: Latin American and Iberian Cultures Dept., 2014, 349 p. This dissertation studies the creative practices and modes of self-representation of citizens who use cultural resources to engage in political criticism in contemporary Cuba. Their narrative choices emphasize their status as ‘regular citizens’ as to distinguish themselves from both dissidents and institutionally accredited cultural producers. Both the reconfigurations of the cultural field and the contested meanings of democracy in post-Cold War Cuba are re-examined through a reading of informal hubs of cultural production.
Natural resource revolutions: Mexico and Cuba within the sphere of U.S. hegemony by Joseph J. Garcia, University of New Mexico: Latin American Studies Dept., 2015, 282 p. This dissertation presents the contexts surrounding the anti-imperialist Mexican and Cuban revolutions. On the basis of theories by Wallerstein, Skocpol, Tilly, and Weber, I develop the concept of “natural resource revolutions” and “charismatic revolutionary leadership”. Through “charismatic revolutionary leadership,” both Lázaro Cárdenas and Fidel Castro were successful because there were institutional dynamics inherent in revolution that facilitated the nationalist implementation of natural resource sovereignty.
The normalization of sexual diversity in revolutionary Cuba by Emily J Kirk, University of Nottingham, Latin American Studies Dept., 2015, 311 p. Cuba, once understood to be a highly homophobic country, has been lauded internationally for its attention to sexual diversity rights since 2008. This study focuses on popular attitude changes and what that says about the Revolution itself.
Understanding Cuban Tourism: Affect and Capital in post-Special Period Cuba by Rebecca Heather Ogden, University of Manchester: Latin American Cultural Studies Dept., 2015, 234 p. This study concerns the marketing, appropriation and consumption of affect in contemporary Cuban tourism. Following Raúl Castro’s reform, touristic contact spaces have expanded . This study analyzes the affective dimensions of Cuba’s representation in touristic texts, and discusses the affective negotiations between hosts and guests on the ground.
Liberated Africans in the Atlantic World: The Courts of Mixed Commission in Havana and Rio de Janeiro 1819-1871 by Jennifer Louise Nelson, University of Leeds: Latin American Studies Dept., 2015, This study compares two courts of Mixed Commission for the suppression of the slave trade in two notorious slave trading ports: Havana and Rio de Janeiro, in the 19th cent. These courts were established following Treaties, through which Britain imposed slave trade laws. Their impact is addressed through the study of the liberated Africans or “recaptives” who the courts were intended to free. This dissertation addresses local socio-economic circumstances and British imperial policy and objectives in each place, viewing the courts as part of a wider Atlantic system
Los que se quedan: non-migrant experiences of emigration, absence and diaspora in contemporary Cuba by Patrick O’Shea, University of Manchester: Latin American Cultural Studies Dept., 2015, 254 p. This study explores emigration, exile and diaspora as central experiences of contemporary Cuban society and culture as lived mutually and simultaneously by both those who emigrate and those who do not. Through interviews conducted in Cuba, the biographical narratives of those who have not emigrated serve to interrogate the Cuban cultural encounter with emigration, exile and diaspora since 1959.
Music
Kinetic Conversations: Creative Dance-Music Performance and the Negotiation of Identity in Contemporary Havana, Cuba by Elizabeth Kimzy Batiuk, University of Michigan: Music Dept., 2015, 332 p. Through creative dance-music performance, professional folkloric performers pursue individual agendas and negotiate identities central to everyday life. This study presents three cases in which performers alter standard genres in ways that are both aesthetically arousing and socially effective. Contemporary identity discourses form part of the subjective significance of dance-music performance, while music helps shape the kinetic dimension of individual identity and social roles.
Jose White Laffita (1835-1918): A biography and a study of his “Six Etudes,” Op. 13 by Yavet Boyadjiev, City University of New York: Music Dept., 2015, 271 p. The violinist, composer, and pedagogue José Silvestre de los Dolores White Laffita (1835-1918), known as Joseph White, was a Cuban-born musician of African and French heritage, who, after receiving early musical education in Cuba, went to France in 1855 to study at the Paris Conservatoire, eventually gaining great acclaim across Europe and the Americas. The dissertation looks first at the history and background of the publication of the composers’ Six Études and its inclusion in the official curriculum of the Paris Conservatory, and then analyzes their contents from a pedagogy standpoint.
Performance guide to the songs of Eduardo Sanchez de Fuentes by Rebecca Henriques, University of Miami: Performance (Music) Dept., 2014, 146 p. The purpose of this study is to provide teachers, students, coaches and professional performers with a performance guide to the habaneras, romanzas and canciónes of Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes.
Beyond the blockade: An ethnomusicological study of the policies and aspirations for U.S.-Cuban musical interaction by Timothy P. Storhoff, Florida State University: Music Dept., 2014, 308 p. This dissertation explores musical exchanges between Cuba and the United States from 2009-2013, focusing specifically on international music festivals in Cuba and U.S. ours by Cuban musical artists and bands to view the larger political, economic, social and cultural implications and effects of musical interactions between the two nations.
Philosophy
An other humanity: (Re)constituting gender, bodies, and the social from within Afro-Cuban Santeria by Xhercis Mendez, SUNY- Binghamton: Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture Dept., 2014, 244 p. “Gender” as a cross-cultural category of analysis limits, distorts, and (mis)translates our understanding of social and power relations in the “post-colonial” geographies of the Caribbean and its diasporas. This dissertation explores how the “body” and the “human” are reconfigured in and through Afro-Cuban Santería. I argue that the global circulation of Afro-Cuban Santería and its concomitant reconstitution of bodies and power radically re-imagine racialized bodies, the making of decolonial spaces, and ultimately an Other, transformative vision of humanity.
Psychology
From Soweto to Cuito Cuanavale: Cuba, the war in Angola and the end of Apartheid by I. H. Saney, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies: Psychology Dept., 2014. There are unresolved issues concerning the 1987-88 military conflict in Angola, specifically the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. This dissertation examines Cuba’s role in the conflict.
Going to see La Virgen Cubana: A study of the Marian image of Our Lady of Charity based on Mircea Eliade’s phenomenological perspective by James Michael Schmidt, Saybrook University: Psychology Dept., 2015, 384 p. Through Our Lady of Charity/Nuestra Señora de la Caridad, a local Virgin Mary symbol found in both beliefs, Cubans have developed a unique sense of individual and collective identity. Related elements of Cuban social and religious phenomena are investigated through the theories of Mircea Eliade and Carl G. Jung, as well as through a review of the literature and an analysis of the image’s symbols and nation’s historical and cultural narratives,
Sociology
Imposing Capitalism: Japanese and American Colonialism in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Cuba, 1890s-1920s by Marco Antonio Guzman, UCLA: Sociology Dept., 2015, 174 p. This project focuses on the comparative emergence of capitalism in sugar-producing colonies during the early 20th century. U.S. colonial policies regarding property rights and existing class dynamics led to a reorganization of the colony’s socioeconomic structure, leading not only to higher production levels, but also to class inequality..
From plantation to prison: Visual economies of slave resistance, criminal justice, and penal exile in the Spanish Caribbean 1820-1886 by Reynaldo Ortiz-Minaya, SUNY Binghamton: Sociology Dept., 2014, 598 p. The study centers on slaves from Cuba who were condemned to penal servitude in the mid- to late-19th century. With regards to Cuba, it analyzes the “industrial” phase of the Cuban ingenio (sugar mill) during the island’s exponential augmentation in sugar production, as central to the process of modernization in the Spanish Caribbean, within an ever-increasing U.S. imperial orbit.
COVER PHOTO: Editorial collective member Grete Viddal (author of Vodú Chic: Cuba’s Haitian Heritage, the Folkloric Imaginary, and the State, listed above), on her graduation gown.