Distinguished Scholars Will Speak at Plenary Session of CRI Conference

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The Cuban Research Institute will hold its 12th Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the FIU Modesto A. Maidique Campus on February 14–15, 2019. We're pleased to announce the confirmation of several distinguished scholars in the plenary session, scheduled for Thursday, February 14, 2019, from 11:00 AM to 12:45 PM:

Astrid Arrarás (Moderator)

Dr. Arrarás is Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Politics & International Relations at Florida International University. Her areas of expertise include Latin American politics, political development, and democratization. She has contributed chapters to the volumes Culture and National Security in the Americas, edited by Brian Fonseca and Eduardo A. Gamarra (2017); Prisons in the Americas in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Jonathan D. Rosen and Marten W. Brienen (2015); and Cooperation and Drug Policies in the Americas, edited by Roberto Cepeda and Jonathan D. Rosen (2015).

Jorge Duany

Dr. Duany is the Director of the Cuban Research Institute and Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University. He has published extensively on migration, ethnicity, race, nationalism, and transnationalism in Cuba, the Caribbean, and the United States. He has also written about Cuban cultural identity on the island and in the diaspora, especially as expressed in literature, music, art, and religion. He is the the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of 21 books, including A Moveable Nation: Cuban Art and Cultural Identity (forthcoming); Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know (2017); and Un pueblo disperso: Dimensiones sociales y culturales de la diáspora cubana (2014).

Lillian Guerra

Dr. Guerra is the Waldo W. Neikirk Professor of Cuban and Caribbean History at the University of Florida. She is the author of many scholarly articles and essays as well as four published books of history, including Heroes, Martyrs, and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba, 1946–1958 (2018); Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971 (2012); and Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico (1998). She is currently completing a fifth book of history, Patriots and Traitors in Cuba: Political Pedagogy, Rehabilitation, and Vanguard Youth, 1961–1981, under contract with Duke University Press.

Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel

Dr. Martínez-San Miguel is the Marta S. Weeks Chair in Latin American Studies at the University of Miami. She is the author of four books: Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-Colonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context (2014); From Lack to Excess: "Minor" Readings of Latin American Colonial Discourse (2008); Caribe Two Ways: Cultura de la migración en el Caribe insular hispánico (2003); and Saberes americanos: Subalternidad y epistemología en los escritos de Sor Juana (1999). She is currently working on her fifth book project, Archipiélagos de ultramar: Rethinking Colonial and Caribbean Studies.

Francisco Scarano

Dr. Scarano is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research and teaching area is the history of the Caribbean region, with emphasis on the Spanish-speaking nations and Puerto Rico in particular. He has worked on all periods and a variety of topics, ranging from slavery and the plantation economy, demographic history, and the reconstituted peasantries of the Spanish Caribbean, to race and racialization processes and the influence of racial imagery on nation-building. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of several books, including Puerto Rico: Cinco siglos de historia (revised ed., 2015); Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State (2009); and Cuba: Contrapunteos de cultura, historia y sociedad (2007).