On/Off-Screen: The Other Histories of Cinema in Latin America
April 15th, 2021 - April 16th, 2021
Explores practices of film distribution, exhibition and cinemagoing in Latin America. Over the past decade, the receiving end of the film chain, including patterns of film distribution and exhibition and the experiences of cinemagoers, has received increasing scholarly attention. Although this turn has made inroads beyond Eurocentric, Anglo-American limits, there is still a need to highlight other important cinematographic regions, especially Latin America. The symposium brings together scholars working in/on this domain from Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Cuba, and the US, etc to engage in conversations about film culture across the Western hemisphere.
More information can be found on the website, here.
A New Political Uprising: Perspectives on Haitian Current Events
April 8th, 2021
Conflict over the tenure of Haitian president Jovenel Moise represents a critical moment for Haitian democratic society. The discussion brings together a panel of homegrown experts, each with a distinct disciplinary perspective, to discuss the Moise power grab, the opposition reaction, and the future of democracy in Haiti.
Download the PDF of the flyer here: Haiti Panel Flyer
"Meeting Cubans 4 Trump" a Brownbag Conversation with Dr. Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
November 19th, 2020
One of the earliest highlights of the 2020 election results was the unexpectedly conservative vote in Miami-Dade county. Cuban-Americans in South Florida across generations backed Trump with unprecedented vigor and excitement and played a crucial role in securing the state for the Republican candidate. What was it about Trump’s political rhetoric and public personality that appealed so specifically to this constituency that had been trending to the left in recent years? Dr. Ariana Hernández-Reguant is a cultural anthropologist whose ethnographic research in South Florida offers insight into both the concrete and intangible motivations behind the Cuban American vote. In conversation with Tulane’s Dr. Carolina Caballero, Dr. Hernández-Reguant will discuss what took Cuban-Americans to the polls for Trump this time around, effectively sealing the electoral fate of one of the most critical swing states in the nation. Ariana Hernandez-Reguant is a Visiting Research Assistant Professor at the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute.
Cuban Musician Robertico Carcasses in conversation with Dan Sharp
November 11th, 2019
One of Cuba’s mos influential musicians and producers, Robertico Carcassés, joins the Chair of Tulane’s Music Department, Dan Sharp, for a live interview about his career and ongoing projects.
Pianist, composer, and producer Robertico Carcassés is one of the most vital influencers in Cuban music today. During his impressive career, Carcassés has toured and recorded with many of Cuba’s top pop, jazz, timba and singer-songwriters, including Descemer Bueno, Dafnis Prieto, Yosvany Terry, Santiago Feliu, César Lopez, and Alfred Thompson.
Since 2001, his dynamic musical project INTERACTIVO has gathered talents from across Havana and continues to push musical boundaries by featuring stellar musicians of all genres: from the rapper Telmary, to the jazz artist Brenda Navarrete, to the innovative Cimafunk.
Conversation with Emma Christopher: "The Amistad Mutineers' Countrymen: a Rebellious Caribbean Diaspora"
September 9th, 2019
Emma Christopher is Associate Professor of History at the The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is a documentary filmmaker and is the director, producer and researcher of They Are We, (New York: Icarus Film, 2014) which won five Best Documentary Awards, featured widely in the media, and was chosen as the United Nations’ Remembrance of Slavery film 2015. It has screened in more than 70 countries around the world. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the film and Emma’s work as, “an inspiration; a victory over slavery”. They Are We is the story of a remarkable reunion, 170 or so years after a family was driven apart by the ravages of the transatlantic slave trade. Her current project continues that research.
Professor Christopher’s latest book is called Freedom in White and Black and is the story of the only two men shipped to Australia as convicts for the crime of slave trading, and the enslaved men, women and children rescued from them. She previously published Slave Ship Sailors and their Captive Cargoes (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and A Merciless Place (New York (Oxford University Press, 2011), which won both the Kay Daniels and Ernest Scott prizes. She is the co-editor, with Marcus Rediker and Cassandra Pybus, of Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World (University of California Press, 2007). She is an anti-slavery campaigner and previously worked at Anti-Slavery Australia. Co-sponsored by the Amistad Research Center and the Tulane Department of History.
Global Entanglements in the Production of Violence and the Migration of Hondurans: Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera
May 20th, 2019
Honduran migration to the U.S. is not new. My research at The Latin American Library and conversations with members of the Honduran communities in New Orleans confirm the changing patterns of Honduran migration in the past decades. In recent years, violence combined with lack of economic opportunities appear to be the main reasons for leaving. Most studies tend to understand violence, crime, and inequality within regional or local processes as a consequence of state weakness, or a combination of both. I claim that Hondurans’ reasons for leaving their country are entangled with global processes. In this talk, I explore U.S.-Central America relations (in particular the ‘war on drugs’), the global agenda on migration control, and its connections to contemporary Honduran migration. These global processes contribute to reproducing violence, crime, and inequality in the region and the country, leaving many low-income Hondurans with no option but to leave the country.
Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She studied Political Science at the Freie Universitat Berlin and Anthropology at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her research investigates urban violence, contemporary prisons, youth gangs, social mobility, and state responses to crime and violence in Latin America, particularly Honduras and Colombia. She is currently working on two research projects: the first explores gender and urban planning in Medellín, Colombia; the second is based on her work as an expert witness for Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. The latter explores the connections between different forms of violence experienced by women and contemporary migration in Central America. Her book, Territories of Violence: State, Marginal Youth, and Public Security, was published in 2013 with Palgrave.
Pre-show panel: The Cuban-American Condition
April 6th, 2019
The Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute and Southern Rep Theatre will be hosting a pre-show panel with members of the faculty and student body of Tulane before the performance of Azul by Christina Quintana, a New York-based writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots. Professors Ana López and Carolina Caballero, and PhD candidate Amanda Fleites Alonso will be discussing Azul and the evolution and current trends in Cuban-American narrative, theater and film, and the aesthetic, social, and political forces that shape, and sometimes dictate, them.
Haiti and the Uses of America: Post- U.S. Occupation Promises: Dr. Chantalle Verna
April 26th, 2018
In her book, Dr. Verna makes evident that there have been key moments of cooperation that contributed to nation-building in both countries. Dr. Verna emphasizes the importance of examining the post-occupation period: the decades that followed the U.S. military occupation of Haiti (1915-34) and considering how Haiti's public officials and privileged citizens rationalized nurturing ties with the United States at the very moment when the two nations began negotiating the reinstatement of Haitian sovereignty in 1930. Their efforts, Dr. Verna shows, helped favorable ideas about the United States, once held by a small segment of Haitian society, circulate more widely. In this way, Haitians contributed to and capitalized upon the spread of internationalism in the Americas and the larger world.
Dr. Verna received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University and is currently a professor in the History Department in Florida International University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Dr. Verna focuses on the culture of foreign relations, specifically concerning Haiti and the United States during the mid-twentieth century.
Illicit Traders on New Granada’s Caribbean Coast during the Long Sixteenth Century: Dr. Christian Cwik
April 12th, 2018
This talk examines the early contraband slave trade to New Granada (roughly modern Colombia). After the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Spanish and Portuguese imperial trading spheres were technically separate, but with the decline of Native American populations due to disease, enslavement, and other shocks, Spanish demand for enslaved Africans grew. The Portuguese were allowed to sell slaves to Spanish America only via Spanish factors and with permission of Seville’s House of Trade, established in 1503. Slavers thus sought to circumvent the rules by taking captives directly to the colonies, selling them illegally to Spanish settlers, planters, and pearl seekers. Some illicit traders were caught, especially as the volume of slave trading grew after the 1542 New Laws restricted Native American slavery and the encomienda. This paper examines the early contraband slave trade by way of documents housed in Colombia’s Archivo General de la Nación.
Dr. Christian Cwik holds the post of Lecturer in Atlantic and European History at the University of the West Indies (Trinidad & Tobago). He received his Ph.D in History at the University of Vienna in 2000. Among many other appointments, Cwik has served as visiting professor of History at the University of Havana, the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, and the University of Cartagena. He has published numerous articles and book chapters in addition to edited volumes on Caribbean slavery, criminality, the Sephardic diaspora, Austrian foreign relations, and 20th-century nation-making and anticolonial movements.
Conversation with Claudio Claudia Calviño, Cuban film producer
April 12th, 2018
A conversation with independent Cuban producer Claudia Calviño (Havana, 1983), producer of the award-winning film Santa y Andrés, which premiered at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival and 2017 San Sebastian Film Festival, and won "Best Ibero-American Film" at the Guadalajara Film Festival in 2017. Calviño is a graduate of the Cuban University of Arts in Production. She is one of the founding partners of 5ta Avenida Productions, a company focused on independent film in Cuba since 2006. Her credits as Producer and Executive Producer include Juan de los Muertos (winner of the GOYA Award "Best Ibero-American Film" in 2013), and Melaza (winner among others of "Best Latin American Film" at the Málaga Film Festival and "Newcomer of the Year" at the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, Germany in 2013). She has also produced the documentary features Habana Muda, directed by Eric Brach, and Hotel Nueva Isla, directed by new filmmakers Irene Gutiérrez and Javier Labrador.
The conversation will be led by Ana M. López (Director, “Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute) and Laura-Zo Humphreys (Assistant Professor, Communication) and will address both a general assessment of what being a film producer in Cuba entails as well as Calviño's personal trajectory as the most successful producer in the contemporary Cuban mediascape Calviño has also worked as producer of several foreign films, another aspect of her career that this conversation will explore. More specifically, the conversation will also address how an independent producer functions in contemporary Cuba; the transnational connections and relationships that have enabled her career; and how new technologies and distribution networks impact upon and open new avenues for island-based film producers.
Haitian Art & History at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Edouard Duval-Carrié
November 1st, 2017
Duval Carrié portrays a "Marvelous Reality," a nearly fantastic world of his country in images that could be seen as illustrations of myths and legends. However, many of them become clear critiques of the social and political order in Haitian society. Duval Carrié also presents important aspects of Haitian history, including heroes and relevant figures. He comments on the importance of the past on Haitian contemporary society from a historic viewpoint, including the issue of slavery and its weight in the development of the present.
Edouard Duval Carrié is a contemporary Haitian artist who was born in 1954, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. He was educated at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, in Paris, France; and at the University of Loyola Montreal, in Quebec, Canada.
From Aid to Trade and Entrepreneurship: the Case of Haiti : Daniel Jean-Louis
October 30th, 2017
From Aid to Trade and Entrepreneurship: the Case of Haiti at the Tulane Law School, as part of Haitian Studies week at Tulane University which also coincides with the 29th annual Haitian Studies Association Conference. The lecture had about 75 attendees from throughout Tulane and beyond, including members of the Haitian community, and was followed by an intriguing Q&A session. Professor Jean-Louis discussed breaking the cycle of poverty in Haiti through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration with private and public sector enterprises, as well as international organizations, and NGOs. He was featured in the 2014 documentary Poverty, Inc as well as in an article published for Forbes Magazine in January 2017, How This Social Entrepreneur Is Moving Haiti Away From Aid Toward Trade. For more information on Professor Jean-Louis click here.
To view Prof. Jean-Louis’ lecture, please visit the following link. Video courtesy of Patrick Dunn from the Tulane Law School.
Poverty, Political Theater, and Emancipatory Education in the Caribbean: Michell Nonó
March 15th, 2017
Caribbean artist and community organizer Michell Nonó will discuss the role of social practice art in struggles for equality, visibility, and political change. Together Nonó and her sister comprise Las Nietas de Nonó, a performance collective that also runs an alternative art and community space in a house they inherited from their grandfather in the industrial zone of San Antón, Puerto Rico. The sisters decribe the space, known as Patio Taller, as a site for emancipatory education in a Freyrean model, where education is not separated from everyday life. They also host residencies for other Caribbean artists and activists. Las Nietas are perhaps best known for poular theater productions, based on their family’s memories such as drug trafficking, violence and incarcration, and the cycle of poverty and racial and class discrimation that feed these circumstances.
Vodú Chic: Cuba's Haitian Heritage, the Folkloric Imaginary, and the State: Dr. Grete Viddal
October 21st, 2016
A lecture by Dr. Grete Viddal, Zemurray-Stone Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, “Vodú Chic: Cuba's Haitian Heritage, the Folkloric Imaginary, and the State” at 4:00 pm on Friday October 21st.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitian agricultural laborers arrived in Cuba to cut cane as the Cuban sugar industry was expanding between the 1910s and the 1930s. Historically, Haitian laborers occupied the lowest strata in Cuban society. Until recently, the maintenance of Haitian traditions in Cuba was associated with rural isolation and poverty. Today however, Cuba's Haitian communities are increasingly linked with cultural institutes, heritage festivals, music promoters, and the tourism industry. Music, dance, and rituals of Vodú are reimagined for the public stage. Viddal's book in progress, Vodú Chic, explores how haitiano-cubanos utilize emerging economies of folklore in the socialist state “particularly heritage conservation projects and the tourist industry" to assert their voices and transform once-denigrated traditions into the exotic and desired.
To Stand Like Saint Domingo: Caribbean Networks of Rebellion in the Age of Revolution: Dr. Michele Reid-Vazquez
April 5th, 2016
The last talk in the series of Slave Rebellions Lecture Series by Dr. Michele Reid-Vazquez, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and titled “To Stand Like Saint Domingo: Caribbean Networks of Rebellion in the Age of Revolution."
La Habana Vieja: Una ciudad viva: Eusebio Leal
October 15th, 2015
Eusebio Leal Spengler, (Havana, Cuba, 1942), is the historian of the city of Havana, director of the restoration program of Old Havana and its historical center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Deputy to the National Assembly of the Popular Power in the IV, V, and VI Legislature, and the Ambassador of Good Will of the United Nations. He holds a Master’s degree in Latin American, Caribbean, and Cuban Studies, and a doctorate in Historical Sciences, both from the University of Havana. He is President of the Commission of Monuments in the City of Havana, and a specialist in Archeological Sciences.
Dr. Leal’s talk, presented in Spanish, outlined the decades-long process of restoring the historic core of Old Havana and the challenges of maintaining a balance between historical preservation and social restoration.
Racism vs. Socialism: A conflict out of place. Mapping the Cuban Racial Debate, Internal Colonialism, and the New Racist Economy: Robert Zurbano
October 13th, 2015
Roberto Zurbano Torres (1965) is a writer and essayist, cultural critic, and anti-racism activist. He is the author of the books Elogio del lector (1990), Ramón Rubiera: un astro ilusorio (1992), Poética de los noventa: Ganancias de la expresión (1994), Los estados nacientes: Literatura cubana y postmodernidad (1996), and essays such as Raza, literatura y nación: el triángulo invisible del siglo XX cubano, El rap cubano: un discurso hambriento de realidad and Cuba 2012: Doce dificultades para enfrentar los neo-racismos. He is a two-time winner of the DADOR, a Cultural Journalism award, and the Medal for National Culture. His works have appeared in Temas, La Gaceta, Universidad de La Habana, La Letra del Escriba, Casa de las Américas, Catauro, Movimiento, Afrohispanic Review, Meridional, and the New York Times.
Zurbano works at the Centro de Investigaciones Literarias at the Casa de las Américas. He has given lectures all around Latin America as well as Europe, specializing in popular culture, race, music, and black writers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through his work in activism he recently founded the Proyecto Pichon Haitien, which promotes the contributions of Haitian immigrants to Cuban national culture. He is a member of the UNEAC, LASA, and Articulación Regional Afrodescendiente de América Latina y el Caribe, Capítulo Cubano (ARAAC).
“A Historical Perspective on Present Day Transformations in US-Cuba Relations” and “Going Green: Saving the Earth, Environmental Sustainability, and Civil Society in Cuba”
March 11th, 2015
Henry Heredia, Director of International Relations at the Juan Marinello Institute in Havana and Luis Martínez Fernández, Professor of History at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, will join us for a public lecture and open seminar. The lecture by Martínez Fernández on the historical transformation of US-Cuba relations and the recent changes in Cuba will complement Heredia’s seminar on the opening of civil society on the island. Heredia will also address collaborative, ongoing opportunities for academic exchange and research between Cuban and US students and scholars.
12/17 in the history of Cuban-US Relations: Causes, Results, Repercussions, Dr. Carlos Alzugaray Treto
February 20th, 2015
Dr. Carlos Alzugaray Treto, of the Asociación de Escritores, Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC) and Consejo Editorial Revista Temas, will present a talk entitled: "12/17 in the history of Cuban-US Relations: Causes, Results, Repercussions."
On December 17 Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announced that they had reached several agreements as a result of 18 months of secret negotiations. The general purpose of that agreement is to normalize relations between the two countries. Although long overdue, these agreements surprised every independent observer because of their swiftness and scope. They point to a new stage in the relationship between these two close neighbors. Dr. Alzugaray will analyze the causes, results and repercussions of what was agreed on from a Cuban perspective.
Guantánamo Post-9/11: Human Rights & Constitutional Law in Modern America
September 18th, 2014
Guest speakers:
Jess Bravin: Wall Street Journal, author of Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantánamo Bay
Denny Leboeuf: ACLU, Tulane JD
Chaplain James Yee: Former U.S. Army Chaplain, author of For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
The Guantánamo Public Memory Project is a traveling exhibit that examines the history of the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from multiple perspectives and raises questions about U.S.-Cuban relations, civil liberties, national security, and public memory in the past, present, and future.
Publishing in Cuba: Past, Present & Future
April 24th, 2013
Featuring distinguished Cuban publishers, writers, and cultural workers, this panel addresses a broad spectrum of Cuban publishing practices and will engage the audience in a debate about the future of publishing on the island.
Moderated by:
Mabel Cuesta (Matanzas, Cuba, 1976) Assistant Professor of U.S. Latino and Caribbean Literature, Department of Hispanic Studies, the University of Houston. Author of Cuba post-soviética: un cuerpo narrado en clave de mujer (Cuarto Propio, 2012).
Featured Speakers:
Alfredo Zaldívar (Holguín, Cuba, 1956) Poet, author, editor, director. Prolific author, Zaldívar has also published widely in literary journals and magazines around the world. Zaldívar has received, among others, the National Poetry Awards Jose Jacinto Milanés (1988, 2001), Adelaida de Mármol (2004), Medardo Vitier (1997), and the National Edition Prize (2012) for his lifetime work. He founded and directed Ediciones Vigía (1985-2000). He is an active member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), and is currently the Executive Director of Ediciones Matanzas.
Nicolás Hernandez Guillén (La Habana, Cuba, 1951) Author, scholar, publisher, and professor of Mathematics and Computer Sciences at the University of Havana since 1972. He is also a well-known scholar on the poetry and prose of his grandfather, Nicolás Guillén. In collaboration with Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera and Norberto Codina, he has published anthologies on his grandfather's work. He has served as president of the Nicolás Guillén Foundation since 1996.
Norberto Codina (Caracas, Venezuela, 1951) Poet, author, and editor. Codina has published many books of chronicles, prose, and poems. He holds some of the most prestigious Cuban poetry prizes, including David (1974, 1976), Poesía de Amor de Varadero (1982) and Julián del Casal UNEAC (1983). Codina was a finalist for the Critics National Award (1987), was honored with a National Culture Distinction by the National Ministry of Culture (1996), and was awarded with the Cultural Journalism Prize (2005). He has been the Executive Director of La Gaceta de Cuba for the last 25 years.
El libro en Cuba: cultura, mercado, y otros desafíos: Olga Marta Pérez
March 18th, 2011
Olga Marta Pérez is a fiction writer, poet, editor and screenwriter for radio and television in Havana, Cuba. She is a renowned fiction writer of children's and adult books both within Cuba and abroad. Ms. Pérez has a Licenciatura in Spanish Language and Literatures from the University of Havana. Since 1980 she has worked in various capacities in major publishing firms in Havana such as Orbe, Gente Nueva, Abril, Capitán San Luis, and Ediciones Unión, where she has served as director since 2003. She has also worked for Editorial Letras Cubanas, Caminos (Centro Martin Luter King Jr), and abroad at Libresa in Ecuador, Ocean Press in Australia, and Isla Negra Editores in Puerto Rico. She was also editor-in-Chief of the weekly journal Pionero, and Director of the children's magazine Nosotros.
Albert Valdman Lecture: Kapwa ap kenbe djanm - Sociolinguistic Variation in Northern Haiti
March 5th, 2010
Among French-based creoles, Haitian Creole has the highest degree of standardization, with a written norm—Standard Haitian Creole (SHC)—based on the speech of Port-au-Prince monolingual speakers. For instance, SHC lacks front rounded vowels and postvocalic /r/ and is reaching the rest of the country through the media and schools.
To evaluate the incursion of SHC into the North region, a sociolinguistic study of Northern Haitian Creole (NHC) was conducted in Cape Haitian, Haiti's second largest city, and surrounding countryside. Besides stereotypes such as the possessive pronoun kin (vs. SHC pa), we found that several NHC features first described are still ubiquitous in the North.
In this presentation, we look at social factors and linguistic conditioning (syntactic and phonological) of three sociolinguistic variables, shedding light on the current vitality and status of NHC features. While the frequently occurring third person singular pronoun seems to have remained below the level of consciousness, the preposition ak with, which alternates between local ake and standard ak / avè / avèk, appears to be at least a marker, if not a stereotype (Valdman 2008). As for the possessive, which varies between the local form N + a + NP and the standard N + NP, it is pointed out in some speakers' metalinguistic comments, but its status as a marker or stereotype is unclear.
Using a subset of 24 speakers from the more than 120 in our corpus, we show that regardless of their individual sociolinguistic status, all three variables show a robust preference for NHC features in most syntactic contexts. This study contributes to the growing body of literature applying the tools and methods of variationist sociolinguistics to creole languages, in an effort to assess the effects of the standard on other geographic varieties.
¡Sí Cuba!: Collecting Cuban Art
Thursday, January 28, 2010
6:00 p.m., New Orleans Museum of Art
Mangos, Macetas y Mariposas: Reality Points in Cuban Cultural Development Over the Last Two Decades by Adolfo V. Nodal, arts and cultural administrator
Friday, January 29, 2010, Tulane University
2:00 p.m.
Notes on Visual Arts in Cuba and Their Context In-Between Two Centuries by Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández Rodríguez), contemporary artist from Cuba
Woldenberg Art Center – Freeman Auditorium
3:00 p.m. "Collecting Cuban Art": A Panel Discussion Woldenberg Art Center – Freeman Auditorium Featuring:
- Holly Block, Executive Director, Bronx Museum
- Dan Cameron, Director of Visual Art, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans and Director, Prospect.2
- Sandy Levinson, Executive Director of the Cuban Art Space of the Center for Cuban Studies, New York, NY
- Adolfo V. Nodal, arts and cultural administrator
- Ricardo Viera, Director/Curator, Lehigh University Art Galleries and Professor of Art
- Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández Rodríguez), contemporary artist from Cuba
See ¡Sí Cuba! Online for full information and schedules of events.
Havana: A Virtual Stroll: Héctor Delgado Pérez
November 16th, 2009
Photojournalist Héctor Delgado Pérez takes us on a virtual tour through Havana, using aerial and street level views of the city. Covering the city's historical heritage and landmarks, the tour will accentuate daily life in Havana's streets: its markets, its social gatherings, its foot traffic, its vintage cars, and its notorious buses, the camellos. We glimpse its ritual practices (from Catholicism to Santería, Palo, Abakuá, and Spiritualism), as well as its processions, street performances, and its famed nightlife. With generous support from The Center for Scholars, School of Liberal Arts. Co-Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Urban Studies, Religious Studies, Cuban and Caribbean Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies.
Eruditos o ciudadanos: Un testimonio personal: Cuban author and Critic Ambrosio Fornet
October 23rd, 2009
En la Cuba del siglo XVIII la condición de erudito estaba determinada por la relación con los libros. Cuando comencé mi investigación sobre el movimiento editorial cubano-que en su primera fase abarcó los siglos XVIII y XIX-no tardé en percatarme de que mis motivaciones no eran las propias del erudito, sino más bien las de un simple ciudadano deseoso de responderse estas preguntas: ¿qué funciones sociales cumple el libro? ¿Cuáles son las dimensiones que adquiere el libro en cada una de las fases por las que atraviesa (producción-circulación-lectura)? En mi charla intentaré dar cuenta de las conclusiones a que llegué en esta búsqueda que ya abarca también la primera mitad del siglo XX.
-Ambrosio Fornet
Ambrosio Fornet (Cuba, 1932) se ha desempenado como crítico literario, ensayista, editor y guionista de cine. Es autor de diversas colecciones de ensayos (En blanco y negro 1967; Las máscaras del tiempo, 1995; La coartada perpetua, 2002; Carpentier o la ética de la escritura, 2006), de numerosas antologías y de El libro en Cuba (1994), estudio sobre el movimiento editorial cubano en la época colonial. En 2000 recibió el Premio Nacional de Edición. Es miembro de la Academia Cubana de la Lengua.
Summer Teacher Institute: Exploration of the African Diaspora in the Americas
July 11th, 2009
Eleven teachers participated in the Latin American Resource Center's summer 2009 teacher institute. The Stone Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for African Studies at University of Florida, Gainesville and the New Orleans Dance Festival hosted this year's summer teacher institute entitled, Exploration of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Three of the eleven teachers participating in the summer institute came from outside of Louisiana (Illinois, Kansas and Houston, Texas). The remaining eight educators were from Louisiana. Of those participants from Louisiana, there were two teachers from the Recovery School District, two from East Baton Rouge parish, one from West Feliciana parish, one from St. Tammany parish, and two from Jefferson parish. The educators teach Social Studies, World Geography, Art, Music, Spanish, and there was one librarian in attendance.
Teachers participating in this year's institute were able to learn about the African Diaspora in Latin America from dancers, cultural anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, librarians, as well as from other teachers. Integrating dance workshops, academic presentations, library visits, and performances, the institute highlighted the power of using local community resources to address global issues. The institute traced the African Diaspora in Latin America through in-depth looks at Africa and the Trans-Atlantic slave voyages and its interpretation through dance. Dancers from Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil highlighted specific movement and rhythms which can be felt and seen in the dances of Congo Square in New Orleans, LA. With a special focus on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, educators were able to link important resources found on campus and within the community to content taught in their classrooms. All who participated in this institute were able to physically experience some of the many connections that New Orleans and the United States as a whole shares with Latin America. The institute enabled teachers to create curricula on the diversity of Latin America and it gave them the ability to make global connections to the traditional content already taught in textbooks in the K-12 classroom. Educators were able to leave with a better understanding of New Orleans' cultural role in fostering African Diaspora and movement from the Americas. They also learned about the valuable resources and other opportunities available at National Resource Centers on Africa and Latin America, the Amistad Research Center, and the Latin American Library at Tulane University.
Dr. Agnes Ngoma Leslie, Director of Outreach of the National Resource Center on Africa at the University of Florida led the institute with a presentation on the diversity of Africa. Dr. Leslie shared with educators the valuable resources available at the center as well as distributed curricula developed by the center. Key scholars in the field of African Diaspora and world renowned dancers continued the dialogue and extended the discussion of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Dr. Rosanne Adderley of the History department at Tulane and Christopher Harter from the Amistad Research Center concluded the first day with an in-depth look and analysis of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. They shared their research as well as some key tools and primary resources available on the web and in the Amistad Research Center to explore in the classroom.
The second day began with Afro-Cuban dancer, Danys Perez Prades or "La Mora" moving the group through the music, dance and social history of African Diaspora in Cuba. Issues of race and identity within Latin America were explored in La Mora's workshop leading all participants eager to continue the discussion with Dr. Aaron Lorenz in the afternoon. Dr. Lorenz conducted a workshop using the Brazilian martial art, Capoeira, to explore these issues and suggested unique methods of introducing these topics in the K-12 classroom. Finally, David Dressing, the curator of Tulane University's Latin American Library reminded everyone of the importance of primary resources and the wealth of information available to all teachers at their local library. Local teachers are able to continue to take advantage of The Latin American Library's resources in their curriculum by setting up appointments to visit in the future.
Friday, the third day, focused the discussion on Haiti. Dancer Peniel Guerier from Haiti guided the group through the social history of Haiti and concluded his session by enabling all participants to feel the grace, strength, and power of the movement and dance of Haiti. The group was then reunited for lunch to discuss curriculum ideas and brainstorm their final products which will be turned into one cohesive curriculum unit by Fall 2009. Artist and scholar Monique Moss introduced the group to her work on Haiti and New Orleans with Samuel J. Green Middle School teacher, Nzinga. Monique taught a Latin American Studies course at Green Middle School this past spring 2009 to eleven seventh and eighth grade students. Her work is part of a project funded by the Latin American Resource Center called Latin American Collaborations. She worked with the school dance teacher, Nzinga to create an interdisciplinary curriculum exploring cultural connections between Haiti and New Orleans.
Her presentation enabled the summer institute educators to have a better understanding of how to implement the content into the classroom. Friday concluded with a final performance by the New Orleans Dance Festival performers. Beverly Trask, festival founder and director highlighted the connection New Orleans shares with the rhythms of Africa and the Americas throughout the performance.
Cynthia Garza and ethnomusicologist Ivor Miller concluded the discussions on identity and race by focusing on Peru and Cuba on the final day of the institute. Overall response from teachers was positive. One teacher said the major strength of the workshop was the: variety of diverse richly informed and talented presenters; superior command of area of expertise. Presenters were also positive and excited to continue the discussions generated by the institute. Future development and projects on connecting local culture to Latin America have already stirred interest among local artists, teachers and community leaders. All educators left the institute to continue work on their lesson plans which will be incorporated into one cohesive curriculum unit on African Diaspora in the Americas. This unit will be available online and in print to all educators and schools at no cost as part of the Latin American Resource Center's lending library service. A few educators will also work together on a presentation for the National Council for Social Studies annual conference in 2010.
Coordinated through the Latin American Resource Center, this institute was sponsored by Tulane University's Stone Center for Latin American Studies, the New Orleans Dance Festival, the Latin American Library, and the Amistad Research Center, and University of Florida's Center for African Studies in Gainesville.
Symposia Hosted at Tulane
2019
In the Shadows of Slavery and Colonialism: A Symposium on Intersectionality and the Law
In the Shadows of Slavery and Colonialism: A Symposium on Intersectionality and the Law provides an opportunity for researchers affiliated with NCI to engage with distinguished scholars in their field around the legal and political legacies of slavery and colonialism through an intersectional lens. The researchers for the 2019 symposium were NCI postdoctoral fellows between 2017-2019. The Symposium theme was selected based on shared issues in the work of these researchers. They are Dr. Bonnie Lucero of the University of Houston and Dr. Emma Shakeshaft of the ACLU of Wisconsin, both of whom were Law & Society Fellows at NCI from 2017-2018, and Dr. Maria R. Montalvo, NCI's 2018-2019 Bonquois Fellow in Women's History in the Gulf South.
2016
16th Annual Tulane Maya Symposium: the Ancient Maya and Collapse
Hosted by the Middle American Research Institute, in collaboration with Tulane’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Mexican Consulate in New Orleans, the 16th Annual Tulane Maya Symposium took place on Thursday, February 14, and concluded on Sunday, February 17, 2019. This year’s conference The Center Could Not Hold: The Ancient Maya and Collapse will explore recent developments in Maya studies as they relate to the broader topic of collapse. Speakers and workshops will address the issue of political decline over the span of ancient Maya prehistory. These researchers will help us address the collapse in a multi-disciplinary fashion and bring attention to recent research in the region.
Since 2002, the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University has hosted a weekend of talks and workshops dedicated to the study of the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America. This yearly meeting has called upon scholars from a wide spectrum of specialties including archaeology, art history, cultural anthropology, epigraphy, history, and linguistics to elucidate the many facets of this fascinating Mesoamerican culture. In developing a broad approach to the subject matter, the conference aims to draw the interest of a wide ranging group of participants from the expert to the beginner.
To view the schedule, registration, and additional information, please visit the Tulane Maya Symposium website.
2013
Rethinking State-Society Relations in Contemporary Latin America
The emergence, crisis, and collapse of neoliberalism gave way to new types of political regimes that set themselves the task of redefining state-society relationships to promote more socially inclusive polities. The accomplishments and shortcomings of those processes need yet to be evaluated, particularly from an encompassing, historically-informed perspective that is not afraid of challenging established assumptions and mainstream understandings of Latin America to do justice to current developments. What are the continuities/ discontinuities in terms of state-society linkages that the various processes of change experienced since the return to democracy introduced in the Latin American landscape? Is Latin America moving towards a more democratic and inclusive society? What is the nature of the new patterns of state-society interaction? Have they drastically altered the legacy of populism, bureaucratic-authoritarianism, and neoliberalism?, in which specific ways? Are emerging regimes promoting new patterns of exclusion or novel forms of authoritarianism?
A group of scholars from different disciplines, country expertise drawn from Latin America, the US and Europe met on May 24th at Tulane University to debate empirically and theoretically informed articles that address these questions.
Student Symposia
2019
The City, Culture, and Community (CCC) Annual Graduate Symposium: VOICES: Visibility, Orientation, Identity, Creativity, Environment, Spaces
The 2019 symposium, VOICES: Visibility, Orientation, Identity, Creativity, Environment, Spaces, sought to understand creative approaches to how inequalities are negotiated: socially, culturally, and institutionally.
The symposium focused on research that explores creative approaches to agency, institutional organization, and cultural production and consumption within complex social systems. What are the current issues facing our communities, institutions, and cities? How can we be creative and inclusive in our approach? This symposium intends to create an interdisciplinary space that can bring together scholars, practitioners, students, and community members to engage across lines and extend current conversations around agency, resilience, and social justice across the globe.
The keynote speaker was given by Dr. Ernesto Martinez, Associate Professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon, on Friday, February 15 at 1:30 PM. In his keynote address Queer Arousals in Contexts of Racialized Harm, Dr. Martinez conducts an intersectional analysis of the ways that queer men of color negotiate epistemic injustice through the creation and consumption of film, literature, and art. His research interests include queer ethnic studies, women of color feminisms, US Latinx literature and culture, and literary theory.
Stone Center Graduate Student Summer Field Research Symposium
Stone Center for Latin American Studies invites Tulane University graduate students engaged in the study of Latin America or the Caribbean to apply for funding to conduct fieldwork pertaining to their research outside of the United States. In Spring 2019, a total of $50,000 was awarded to 27 graduate students from 11 departments, representing the School of Liberal Arts, the School of Science and Engineering, and the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Funding was provided through a grant from the Tinker Foundation’s Field Research Grant program as well as through support from the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. Student awardees, the majority of whom had little to no prior field research experience, used this opportunity to explore the feasibility of a particular project and to gain experience in conducting preliminary hands-on field research abroad.
On Saturday, October 19th, the Stone Center held a full-day symposium where grantees reported on the projects they undertook over the course of this past summer. The event was organized into five panel sessions, wherein students gave ten-minute presentations and had the opportunity to ask each other questions about their work. Each panel included students from multiple departments, creating a unique forum for interdisciplinary exchange. In this way, the symposium served not only as a reporting requirement and measure of accountability for awardees, but also as a special peer-learning experience. Students gained insights into each other’s methods and processes as well as challenges and successes in the field.
Latin American and Latinx Studies Symposium at Rollins College
Representing departments as diverse as public health and political science as well as the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, students presented their work to an audience of their peers as well as professional scholars from various universities both across and outside of the U.S. Thanks to generous funding from the Newcomb College Institute, the Altman Program in International Studies and Business, and the Stone Center, students were able to represent Tulane on panels ranging from maternal mortality to the debt crisis to representation of marginalized groups throughout Latin America.
Other Symposia
2011
Coffee, Culture, & Community Development
Coffee, Culture, and Community Development, was a public symposium sponsored by the Vanderbilt Institute for Coffee Studies, Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane, and the National Coffee Association. This took place on Thursday, March 17, from 3pm-5pm. Renowned panelists will follow coffee from the field to the cup, looking at the sometimes surprising connections between history, health benefits, fair trade practices, and consumption. This event was part of the NCA Centennial Celebration and was free and open to the public.
Click here to read about the Coffee, Culture, & Community Development K-12 Teacher Workshop preceding the Symposium.
2010
School of Architecture Latin America Symposium: EN EL AULA: Beyond Latin American Architecture
“EN EL AULA: Beyond Latin American Architecture,” was a symposium and workshop on Friday through Sunday (April 9-11) encouraging leading scholars to introduce issues of Latin American architecture and urbanism into the classroom.
“A large number of students of architecture from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Chile are planning on attending the event,” says Robert González, assistant professor of architecture.
The symposium, which is free and open to the public, begins at 6 p.m. on Friday (April 9) with an opening address by Javier Sanchez, winner of the Golden Lion Award for Urban Projects at the 2006 Venice Biennale. His lecture, “Inhabiting Mexico City,” will be presented in the Richardson Memorial Building, room 204, and will be followed by a reception.
