Meetings

Note: For information to access the readings, please email emoodie at illinois.edu  OR  helaine at illinois.edu

SPRING 2018

Cuban Studies Workshop/Taller Cubano invites you to a get-together with Jacqueline Loss, Literatures, Cultures & Languages, University of Connecticut
– brownbag edition and epilogue (a conversation)
at noon on Thursday, April 5 (feel free to bring your brown bag lunch!)
Location: Undergraduate Library 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)
“From Discrepant Cosmopolitanisms to Refinement (by way of the Soviets)”
Jacqueline Loss will talk about her own scholarly trajectory, professional positioning vis-a-vis Cuban culture, and the importance of thinking interdisciplinarily about Cuba in global terms.
Biography
Jacqueline Loss (PhD, 2000, Comparative Literature, University of Texas-Austin) teaches Latin American and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Her publications include Dreaming in Russian: The Cuban Soviet Imaginary (University of Texas Press, 2013) and Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place (Palgrave, 2005). She is the co-editor with José Manuel Prieto of Caviar with Rum: Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience (Palgrave 2012) and with Esther Whitfield of New Short Fiction from Cuba (Northwestern University Press, 2007). In addition, she served as an advisor for Literature from the Axis of Evil: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations (New Press, 2006). Among the writers she has translated into English are Víctor Fowler Calzada, Antonio Álvarez Gil, Ernesto René Rodríguez, Jorge Miralles, Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and Armando Suárez Cobián. She is also in charge of the “Translation Magic” column of Cuba Counterpoints, for which she serves on the advisory board and is working on a digital humanities and documentary project around Cuba at finotype.org.
That same day, Dr. Loss will present a talk at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Then, join us for the CLACS lecture at 3 pm at the Lucy Ellis Lounge (1080 FLB)
“Inquiry into Mañach’s Choteo in 21st Century English”
In this presentation, Loss discusses how only through a tedious and multi-step process of translation has she come to better understand why Inquiry into Choteo is one of those essays which many would say, of course, that they have read, but that likely they have not in its entirety. Demonstrating how the performance of “choteo,” the performance of a certain attitude toward sobriety and jocularity far older than Mañach’s original 1928 essay remains constitutive of an important aspect of Cubanía, Loss relates the unease that is palpable throughout the essay to an emerging nation’s necessity to gain “stable footing,” and the author’s individual experience as a postcolonial subject. In turn, she emphasizes the importance of reflecting upon this moment for translating intersectional identities today.

SPRING 2017

Tuesday, February 14; 5 pm.  Reading discussion, led by Helaine I. Silverman (Professor, Anthropology).  Location: UGL 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)
Reading: Gjelten, Tom.  Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba (Chapters 19-21).  Penguin Books, 2008; pp. 280-329.

Thursday, February 23; Noon
Location: CLACS conference room: 101 International Studies Buidling
Speaker: Soraya Castro Marino (Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad de La Habana; guest of the International Forum on U.S. Studies/IFUSS at UIUC)
Talk: “A New Epoch on US-Cuban Relations: What Comes Next?”

Tuesday, March 7; Noon
Location: CLACS conference room, 101 ISB
Speaker: Dra. Belkis Rojas, Universidad de Pinar del Rio, Cuba (in Spanish)
Talk: TBA
AND
Time: 5 pm
Location: UGL 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)
Event: Conversation with Belkis Rojas, followed by dinner.

Tuesday, April 11; 5 pm
Location: UGL 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)
Readings:

  • Hill, Matthew J.  “Reimagining Old Havana: World Heritage and the Production of Scale in Late Socialist Cuba.” In: Deciphering the Global: Its Scales. Spaces and Subjects, edited by Saskia Sassen.  New York: Routledge, 2007; pp. 59-77.
  • Hill, Matthew J.  “The Future of the Past: World Heritage, National Identity, and Urban Centrality in Late Socialist Cuba.”  In: Global Downtowns, edited by Marina Peterson and Gary W. McDonogh.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012; pp.186-205 .
  • Hill, Matthew J. and Tanaka, Maki.  “Entrepreneurial Heritage: Historic Urban Landscapes and the Politics of ‘Comprehensive Development’ in Post-Soviet Cuba,” In: Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability: International Frameworks, National and Local Governance (2015).  Available at: https://works.bepress.com/matthew_j_hill/10/

Note: These readings are in preparation for Dr. Hill’s visit on April 27th.

Thursday, April 27; Noon
Location: CLACS, 101 ISB
Speaker: Matthew J. Hill, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Talk: “The Politics of Heritage and Urban Redevelopment in La Habana Vieja”
AND
5 pm
Location: UGL 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)
Taller Cubano conversation with Matthew Hill, followed by dinner.


FALL 2016

Thursday, September 1, 2016; 5 pm – Initial Organizing Meeting
Location: Intermezzo Cafe, Krannert Center (500 S Goodwin Ave, Urbana, IL 61801)

Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016; 5 pm – Reading discussion on Cuba, led by Dara E. Goldman (Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese).  Location: UGL 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)

Readings:
Perez, L.A., Jr. (1998). Cuba, c. 1930-1959. In L. Bethell (Ed.), Cuba: A short history (pp. 57-93). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dominguez, J. (1998). Cuba since 1959. In L. Bethell (Ed.), Cuba: A short history (pp. 95-148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016; 5 pm.  Reading discussion of work by Sean Brotherton, led by Ellen Moodie (Associate Professor, Anthropology).  Location: UGL 142 (lower level, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)

Reading:
Brotherton, P.S. (2012). Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba. Durham: Duke University Press.

Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016; 5 pm.  A discussion with medical anthropologist Sean Brotherton (Anthropology, University of Chicago), with all welcomed to go to dinner afterwards.  Location: Davenport Hall, room 109A (This is the classroom in the Anthropology Office.)

Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016; 5 pm.  Reading discussion, led by Kathleen M. Ernst, Graduate Student in Sociology.  Location: Davenport Hall, room 109A (This is the classroom in the Anthropology Office.)

  • to access reading, go to “Readings” page.