Research Colloquium Series - Spring 2013
Each semester, CLACS hosts a Research Colloquium series which combines a graduate level course with a speaker series. The course is co-taught by faculty of distinct disciplines, bringing together different academic fields of study. The event series invites top scholars from around the world to present current research to the NYU community as well as the general public. These cutting-edge themed colloquium series and conferences are the result of faculty working groups.
The title for the Spring 2013 Colloquium series is "What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society".
This Distinguished Speaker series addresses where Cuba is now in the geopolitical imaginary that once heralded Cuba as the exemplar of radical left projects in Latin America. In recent years, Cuban culture has challenged the projects of the revolution and has recast the cold war frames of embargo, exile, and exceptionalism. A new generation of writers, bloggers, visual and performance artists, and political activists and dissidents have insisted on freedom of expression, the rule of law, the politics of remembering, and the notion of civil society. Both on and off the island, many campaign “for an other Cuba” (Por Otra Cuba), reclaiming the nation and challenging the state. From a burgeoning presence in social media to smaller, poignant acts of reclamation such as political tattoos and graffiti, these social actors are creating spaces of expression and action that open fissures and apertures in the discourse of the revolution and the control of the state. Although they vary in political philosophies, these new voices demand both universality and contingency: an agenda that mixes the politics of human rights, Cuban values, and the unfinished projects of both the republic and the revolution.
Previous Colloquia
“¡Modernity is From Iberia and Latin America!” Fall 2008
“Hauntings: Contested Memory After State Violence in Spain and Latin America” Spring 2009
“Cuba: History, Culture and Revolution” Fall 2009
"Decolonization in the Andes: Contemporary Debates and Transformations" Spring 2010
"Patrimony, Space and Performance in Latin American Cities" Fall 2010
"Our America" Spring 2011
"Contemporary Racisms in the Americas" Fall 2011
"Latin American Independence in the Age of Revolution" Spring 2012
"New Perspectives on Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean" Fall 2012
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
The Fight Against Discrimination & For Visibility of the Denied History of Afro-Cubans in the Current International Context
Since 1989, Tomás Fernández Robaina has held the position of Researcher and Professor at the Department of Cultural & Historical Research and Library Sciences at the National Library of Cuba. In the first presentation for the "What's Left of Cuba?" Colloquium series, Robaina will present an overview of trends in the fight against racial discrimination in Cuba. Robaina highlights the most relevant thinkers of the past to the present, and focuses on the characteristics of this current struggle.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
The Symbolic Use of the Plaza of the Revolution by Cuban Artists and Activists
The "What's Left of Cuba?" Colloquium series continues with New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer, Coco Fusco. She is Director of Intermedia Initiatives at Parsons The New School for Design, and has performed, lectured, exhibited and curated around the world since 1988. Fusco will present her video La Plaza Vacia and discuss the symbolic use of the Plaza of the Revolution by Cuban artists and activists.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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Colloquium - Jafari Allen, José Muñoz, José Quiroga on "Queer Cuba"
The "What's Left of Cuba?" Colloquium series continues with a panel discussion with Jafari Allen, José Muñoz, & José Quiroga on LGTB issues in Cuba, which is also part of the second event in the Globally Queer? series.
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Location:
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor Flex Space, New York, NY 10003 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
The Cuban Argument With Itself
The "What's Left of Cuba?" Colloquium series continues with Cuban-American playwright and director, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas. His highest profile play to date is Blind Mouth Singing, which was translated and produced in Havana, Cuba in 2010. Cortiñas will make a presentation about the hard work for Cubans to get off the island, and the hard work to get back to the island.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
The Politics of Play in Cuban Miami
Forms of cultural play have received scant attention in the context of the Cuban community in the United States. Albert Sergio Laguna examines why this is the case and provides insights from his research on Cuban Miami.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
Moving Space, Moving Race: States of Transit and the Cultures of Cuban Diaspora
Antonio López examines how 20th-century and contemporary expressions of walking and riding across public and private transit infrastructures signal histories of unbalanced movements, shifting tempos, and strange, everyday intimacies between Cuban whiteness and Afro-Cubanness in the U.S.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
Learning to Live in Miami
Alexandra Vazquez pries open the familiar narrativizing about the exilic “condition” that enshrouds Cuban cultural artifacts from Miami and enters into their difficult mangrove aesthetics.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
Fotos del Dia Antes: Cuban Images at the End of the Revolution
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo is a prize-winning writer, photographer, editor, blogger, and journalist. He will reflect on his own work and on new image repertoires that capture the end of "revolutionary" time in Cuba and the uncertain thresholds of a new political moment for the nation.
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
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What's Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society
Partido Revolucionario Cubano (PRC)
Tania Bruguera is one of the leading political and performance artists of her generation. Bruguera’s work researches ways in which Art can be applied to the everyday political life; creating a public forum to debate ideas shown in their state of contradictions and focusing on the transformation of the condition of “viewer” onto one of “citizenry.”
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Location:
Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, New York University, New York, NY 10012 (map)
