“Evidence of Labor: Slavery and Resistance in the Production of the Palacio de Aldama in 1840s Havana”

FIRST PRESENTER

Dante Furioso, Ph.D. Candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton University

In the nineteenth century, construction labor was part of the Spanish colonial plantation system. Through a close reading of sworn legal testimony, this paper analyzes the details of an 1841 slave revolt during the construction of the prominent Palacio de Aldama in Havana, Cuba to provide a window into the hidden realm of architectural production in a slave society. Pairing analysis of this unique legal document, period photographs, and prints, the paper unpacks the division of labor, connections between masonry construction and forced labor, and multiple languages and epistemologies layered on a single site to situate urban building labor within the larger plantation landscape. Sketching the social conflict inherent in the plantation system that undergirded urbanization in the late colonial period in urban Cuba, the paper seeks to reframe and complicate the meaning and origins of this often-cited neoclassical building and urban growth in nineteenth-century Havana.

Dante Furioso is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture and in the certificate program at PLAS, where he was a Lassen Fellow in 2021–2022. He earned a B.A. in History from Wesleyan University and an M. Arch. from the Yale School of Architecture. A licensed architect in NY, he has worked as a design studio instructor, restoration carpenter, fabricator, and writer and editor for architectural publications. His research has appeared in e-flux Architecture, CLOG, The Journal of Architectural Education, and Platform. His dissertation, "Hammer & Machete: The Plantation in the Nineteenth-Century Urbanization of Havana" uses archival research and site visits to Havana to reconstruct and visualize the nature of labor in the construction of urban buildings and spaces as inexorably tied to the nineteenth-century plantation system, examining craft labor, resistance, techniques, materials, and aesthetics.

DISCUSSANT

Ada Ferrer, Dayton Professor of History, Princeton University

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The emancipatory Hispanism of the German Democratic Republic and its migrant production in East Berlin (1949 - 1973)”

SECOND PRESENTER

Jonathan Romero, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton University

Although historical research has extensively examined the Spanish Civil War in relation to East Germany’s national identity myth, its broader connection to an Ibero-American narrative of international solidarity in the early years of the German Democratic Republic has yet to be addressed. This talk argues that the East German state's cultural agenda of internationalism framed pre- and post-WWII revolutionary efforts in Spain and Latin America as part of a cohesive narrative of resistance, which fostered autonomous forms of emancipatory aesthetics among its Spanish-speaking exile population in East Berlin. Drawing on archival research and close readings of cinematic, pictorial, and poetic works by Otto René Castillo, Karlheinz Mund, César Vallejo, Núria Quevedo, Rosaura Revueltas, Josep Renau, Fritz Cremer, and Joris Ivens, this talk uncovers an ostensibly emancipatory logic of Hispanism that developed in East Germany during the Cold War and its impact on the migrants who embodied it at the juncture of their national traditions with imperial agendas and their exilic marginality in East Berlin.

Jonathan Romero is a fifth-year graduate student at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Institute for English Philology and the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at Freie Universitaet Berlin. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on global history and cultural studies at Princeton, the UNTREF in Argentina, and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. From 2022 to 2023, he was a researcher in residence at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid and part of the museum's experimental program for advanced studies, "Tejidos Conjuntivos." His research delves into the urban history of Berlin during the Cold War as experienced and portrayed by its Latin American and Spanish diaspora.

DISCUSSANT

Mauro Lazarovich, PLAS Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer, Princeton University

MODERATOR

Xita Rupert Castro, PLAS Graduate Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University

The PLAS Graduate Workshop series provides advanced graduate students the opportunity to present on their doctoral research and receive comments from other students and faculty. It is a great way of meeting peers and faculty from different departments and becoming acquainted with the variety and breadth of Princeton doctoral projects with a focus on Latin America, including Brazil, and the Caribbean.

This workshop is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff. Lunch will be provided while supplies last.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.