Book Launch

July 10, 2014 - 4:00 PM

Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts Paradigm Press, 2014
Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change

Rafael Rojas
Princeton University Global Scholar

Ana Maria Hernández
LaGuardia Community College

Raúl Rubio
John Jay College, CUNY

Jerry Carlson
The City College of New York and Graduate Center

Mauricio Font
Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies

Araceli Tinajero
The City College of New York and Graduate Center

This handbook explores key themes in the current debate about Cuba’s contemporary cultural and historical dynamics. Leading academics from Cuba, the United States, and Europe bring to light significant revisions of the artistic and literary canon and the historical archive, and they reconsider often neglected subjects and dynamics in historiography as well as contemporary affairs. The book includes new studies on contentious mobilization, leftist activism, and youth organizations in the pre-revolutionary republic. Current analyses include the relation between the Cuban state and intellectuals; institutional legitimation processes; the formation and reconstruction of national identity discourses; and new framings of gender, race, and sexual orientation. The book illuminates the growing salience of social issues and changes in music, literature, cinema, and theater, thus fostering a fuller understanding of historical and current social dynamics of a Cuba in transformation today.