October 3, 2009 - 4:00 PM
José María Aguilera Manzano
Assistant Professor, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of History, Florida International University
The main aim of this talk is to discuss some of the characteristics of the identity project constructed by the Cuban liberal autonomists’ group during the transition from the Ancien Régime to liberalism. Their purpose was to work for a better position for the island within the framework of the Spanish liberal state in construction throughout the first decades of the nineteenth century. Due to censorship, the faction could not use political speech making to achieve its aims. This meant that the group had to look for an alternative way to express its ideas, and literature became the weapon.
About the Speaker:
José María Aguilera Manzano is Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of History, Florida International University, and Assistant Professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain. He gained his Ph.D. at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, in 2005.
He is author of the book La formación de la identidad cubana (La polémica Saco-La Sagra), CSIC, 2005, and several articles: ‘Europe and Colonialism during the Liberal Revolutions’, European University Institute Review; ‘Liberal Havanan currents through the periodic publications of the first half of the nineteenth century’, Cuban Studies; ‘Political use of the epidemic of cholera in Havana’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, among others.
