The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature (2024) is the first book in English to trace the complex history of Cuban literary and intellectual culture from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Broad in its scope, this book examines key figures such as Gómez de Avellaneda, Heredia, Plácido, Manzano, Villaverde, Martí, Casal, Carpentier, Lezama Lima, as well as Piñera, Arenas, and Cabrera Infante, among many others. It also explores theatre and performance groups, film, post-revolutionary projects, writers from the post-1989 Special Period, and the literature of Cuba's diasporas. This event will provide a platform to engage with the editors and contributors of the volume, fostering a dialogue on the impact of Cuban literature within the field of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKERS

Vicky Unruh, University of Kansas

Vicky Unruh is author of the groundbreaking book Latin American Vanguards: The Art of Contentious Encounters (1994), Performing Women and Modern Literary Culture in Latin America (2006), and numerous critical essays. She is also co-editor of Telling Ruins in Latin America (with Michael Lazzara) (2009). She is the recipient of multiple research, teaching, and mentoring awards.

Jacqueline Loss, University of Connecticut

Jacqueline Loss is a critic of Cuban and Latin American literary-cultural studies. Her books Dreaming in Russian (2013) and Caviar with Rum (edited with José Manuel Prieto) (2012) pioneered research into the Soviet imaginary in Cuban culture. Her translation of An Inquiry into Choteo (Jorge Mañach) is a key reference for reflection on Cuba's early twentieth century.

Rachel Price, Princeton University 

Rachel Price is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. Her work focuses on Latin American, Iberian Atlantic, and particularly Cuban literature and culture. Her essays have examined media, slavery, poetics, environmental humanities, and visual art. She is the author of The Object of the Atlantic: Concrete Aesthetics in Cuba, Brazil, and Spain, 1868–1968 (Northwestern University Press, 2014) and Planet/Cuba: Art, Culture, and the Future of the Island (Verso Books, 2015).

David Tenorio, University of Pittsburgh 

David Tenorio is assistant professor of Latin X American studies, performance, and queer studies, as well as a faculty affiliate in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies Cultural studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Their research lies at the intersection of critical infrastructures, new feminist materialisms, nightlife, performance, and queer/trans-worldmaking in Cuba, Mexico, and the US. Their current book Queer Nightscapes (forthcoming) examines the entanglements between affect and queer nightlife in Mexico and the US. 

DISCUSSANT

Rubén Gallo, Princeton University

Rubén Gallo is the Walter S Carpenter Jr. Professor in Latin American Literature at Princeton University, where he has taught since 2002. He is the author of Mexican Modernity: the Avant-Garde and the Cultural Revolution (MIT Press, 2006, winner of the MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize), Freud’s Mexico: Into the Wilds of Psychoanalysis (MIT, 2010, winner of the Gradiva Prize), and Proust’s Latin Americans (Hopkins, 2014). He is also a novelist and has published two books on Cuba: Teoría y práctica de La Habana (2017) and Muerte en La Habana (2021). 

ORGANIZER & MODERATOR

Rubens Riol, Princeton University

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

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