CRI Visiting Scholars

The Cuban Research Institute (CRI) will host two European visiting scholars during the spring semester of 2013. Ms. Ana-Sofia Commichau will conduct research at FIU from March 5 to April 4, with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service and the Graduate Academy of the University of Heidelberg. Dr. Anna Kaganiec-Kamieńska will travel to Miami on March 2-23, with the support of the project "Society-Environment-Technology" of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

Ana-Sofia Commichau
Ph.D. candidate, Transcultural Studies
University of Heidelberg, Germany

"Desde las dos orillas: Cuban and Cuban-American Identity in Literature and New Media"
This doctoral dissertation will contribute to the determination of the relevance of literature (print and electronic media) for transcultural identity formation processes. Thus it represents the expansion of previous investigations on identity and literature to new media. At FIU, Ms. Commichau will work with the Latin American and Caribbean Information Center (LACIC) and the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLoc) in order to find thematically relevant literature, magazines, archives, and online bibliographies. These sources will be used to obtain information on literature in the field of Cuban-American studies, especially concerning recent Cuban-American autobiographies. Special attention will be paid to the analysis of contemporary Cuban and Cuban-American autobiographical novels and weblogs. Descriptions of the writers' thoughts on their personal Cuban past and present should be elementary to their texts. In print media those texts include diaries and autobiographies. In the area of the Internet, research will be concentrated on weblogs as personal online diaries.

Dr. Anna Kaganiec-Kamieńska
Assistant Professor, Institute for American Studies and Polish Diaspora
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

"A Transnational Perspective on Migration: Methodological Issues"
For several years, Dr. Kaganiec-Kamieńska has worked with issues referring to the Latino minority in the United States. She has looked at Latinos from different perspectives (migration, border enforcement, state and national legal regulations and civil initiatives, and human rights abuses). She is most interested in the identity/identification/citizenship issues and (trans)nationalism (migrants' identity). Since the majority of Puerto Ricans apparently voted for statehood in November 2012, Dr. Kaganiec-Kamieńska is planning in the future to conduct research, which would place the results of this referendum in a transnational perspective. She has received funding for a short visit to Miami, focusing on methodology and the development of practical research skills. In particular, she will meet with FIU scholars who work on issues of identity, transnationalism, and migration; discuss the research methods applied in their work and the problems they faced; attend faculty research seminars at CRI; have access to library resources; and discuss the possibility of joint research projects with CRI.