March 10, 2020 - 4:00 PM
Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
An Inquiry into Choteo by Jorge Mañach (transl. Jacqueline Loss, Barcelona 2018)
Jorge Mañach is one of the most important Cuban thinkers of the 20th century. His activity as a philosopher, scholar, journalist, historian, and politician is an index of Cuba’s dramas and conflicts at that time. Mañach, author of Martí, El apóstol is largely responsible for not only construing the 20th century image of one of the nation’s founders, but also for dissecting the conflicted relationship between Cuba and the United States, in the polemical Manifesto of the political group ABC. His diverse list of writings include the foreword to a clandestine edition of Fidel Castro’s famous 1953 speech, “History Will Absolve Me.”
Jacqueline Loss (PhD, University of Texas-Austin) is professor of Latin American literature at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Dreaming in Russian. The Cuban Soviet Imaginary (2013) and Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place (2005) and co-editor of Caviar with Rum: Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience (with José Manuel Prieto, 2012) and New Short Fiction from Cuba (with Esther Whitfield, 2007). Her essays and translations have appeared in Nepantla, Chasqui, New Centennial Review, Bomb, La Gaceta, Kamchatka, Transnational Screens, among other publications. Her translation of Jorge Mañach’s An Inquiry into Choteo was published by Linkgua in 2018. She is currently co-directing, with Juan Carlos Alom, a documentary entitled FINOTYPE.
Massaguer: Trend Setter of Cuban Caricature and Culture
Vicki Gold Levi is a historical picture editor, collector and author. A former contributing picture editor at “Esquire Magazine,” and the co-author of the books, “Atlantic City: 125 Years of Ocean Madness,” “Cuba Style,” and “Times Square Style.” She has been a historical consultant for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, and her Cuban photography collection was included in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, “Cuba, Art and History from 1868 to Today.” Over the years she has donated over 2000 items of vintage Cuban artifacts to The Wolfsonian–FIU in Miami Beach, and the exhibition, “Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer” was created from this donation. Levi recently lectured on Massaguer at The Wolfsonian Museum, the Art Deco World Congress in Buenos Aires, and the NY Art Deco Society.
Cuban Avant-Garde: Fundamental Principles of the 1920s and 1930s
The 1920s was an exhilarating period for the emergent Cuban avant-garde. Revista de Avance and the declaration of the Grupo Minorista rejected tradition, affirmed the new, and defended nationalism as the top issues in the Cuban vanguardia’s agenda. The new generation of artists embraced European modernist trends and combined them with local motifs in their search for national identity. This talk will overview the 1920s and 1930s Cuban avant-garde.
Iliana Cepero (PhD, Stanford University) is assistant professor of Modern/Contemporary Art History and Visual Studies at The New School. She is a Cuban art historian, curator, and art critic. Her professional career includes curatorial work at the Fototeca de Cuba and at the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba. She co-curated the exhibition “Cuba: Art and History. From 1868 to today” held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2008. She has written and lectured extensively on Cuban art and photography.
Discussant
Ernesto Menéndez-Conde (PhD, Duke University) is an assistant professor of Spanish at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. He is the Editor in Chief of ArtExperience:NYC, an online art magazine. His areas of research are related to contemporary Cuban art, aesthetic ideologies, and theories of the image. He has published in journals and magazines in New York City, Spain, Havana, and Miami.
TO REGISTER send email to bildner@gc.cuny.edu.
