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January

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Venue:Online on Crowdcast

Dr. Uva de Aragón will discuss her second mystery novel, featuring the Cuban-American detective María Duquesne. The murder of a young decorator and art curator leads Duquesne and her shrewd colleague Iván Fernández to interview members of a wealthy family at their homes in the best neighborhoods of Miami. Soon a second murder occurs in the gardens of the famous Palace of Vizcaya. Are the deaths of an elegant American from New York and an undocumented Hispanic woman related?

February

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Venue:Online on Zoom

Based on archival research, oral histories, interviews, and musicological analysis, Dr. Benjamin Lapidus examines how interethnic collaboration among musicians, composers, dancers, instrument builders, and music teachers in New York City set a standard for the study, creation, performance, and innovation of Latin music. Musicians specializing in Spanish Caribbean music in New York cultivated a sound that was grounded in tradition, including classical, jazz, and Spanish Caribbean folkloric music.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

In the second lecture of a series, Dr. Benjamin Lapidus explores the life and musical career of Elio Osácar, a.k.a. Sonny Bravo, an Afro-Cuban arranger and performer, as well as co-director of the pan-ethnic salsa group Típica 73, representative of the period 1973–80 in New York Latin music. The group, which covered contemporary Cuban songs, pushed the boundaries of tradition through their instrumentation and performance.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

In this presentation, Dr. Benjamin Lapidus examines how important Cuban musicians arrived in New York during the Mariel exodus and how their presence enriched Cuban folklore, sacred music, and danceable popular music. Through recordings and interviews, the lecture focuses on several artists of the period to explore their impact as musicians and teachers.

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Venue:Online on Zoom

Drs. Javier Francisco-Ortega and Rosalina Montes Espín will examine how the living collections of the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden in Cuba were established with material collected during the Utowana expeditions, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This case study provides an opportunity for further interdisciplinary examination related to questions of U.S. influence in the Caribbean, international cooperation, and neocolonial approaches to engagement and policy.

March

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Venue:Online via Zoom

This workshop is geared toward both small business owners and salespersons, with a focus on Latino and Cuban entrepreneurs. Led by Professor Rafael Soltero Venegas, the event will be held in Spanish and will be broadcast live on Zoom.

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Venue:Online via Crowdcast

Vividly recasting Cuba’s politics in the 1930s as transnational, Dr. Ariel Mae Lambe reimagines Cuban activism during an era previously regarded as a lengthy, defeated lull. In this period, many Cuban activists began to look at their fight against strongman rule and neocolonial control at home as part of the international antifascism movement that exploded with the Spanish Civil War.

April

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

This book gathers nine academic essays and eight journalistic articles on transnational migration and national identity in Cuba and Puerto Rico. The texts focus on the construction and reconstruction of cultural identities among immigrants and their descendants from the two islands in the United States.

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Venue:Online via Zoom

This panel discussion will gather experts on various ethnic groups in Cuba to address how ethnic prejudice and racial discrimination shaped each group's incorporation into Cuban society, and how immigrants and their descendants from various origins sought to overcome such hurdles. In addition, participants will analyze how different ethnic and racial groups contributed to the development of contemporary Cuban culture, as well as the status of the immigrants' descendants in Cuba today.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

Drawing on troves of archival materials, including visual materials, Dr. Michael J. Bustamante excavates Cubans’ contested memories of the Revolution’s roots and results over its first twenty years.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

The main objective of this event is to identify some of the main pedagogical issues involved in teaching about Cuba on the island and in Miami. The panel will gather three educators to share their work on the literacy campaign in Cuba, Cuban-American teachers in Miami, and incorporating Cuba in the curriculum.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

"Letters to Eloísa" is an hour-long documentary film by Adriana Bosch about Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature. It relies on letters written by Lezama between 1961 and 1976 to his sister in exile, to tell the story of the writer’s life, his struggle for artistic freedom, and tragic end.

May

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Dr. Eliana Rivero's "Obra selecta" (Valencia, Spain: Aduana Vieja) gathers some of her best-known essays on Cuban-American cultural studies, Latin American poetry, feminism, and Latin American minorities in the United States. Her pioneering work fuses theoretical reflection, personal testimony, and literary analysis. Dr. Armando Chávez Rivera will present the book.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

This presentation by Dr. David Font-Navarrete explores a series of LPs from the Díaz-Ayala Collection at the FIU Libraries, which evoke the complex nature of Afro-Atlantic deities known as orisha. By considering obscure, commercially-published mid-20th century recordings like "Rezo de Santo" as a significant medium for orisha to flow across time and space, the images and texts of album covers become discernibly saturated with meaning.

June

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Cuido60 is a new academic initiative oriented toward generating information and analysis on aging, care, and rights of older persons in Cuba, directed by CRI Visiting Scholar Elaine Acosta González.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

CRI is partnering with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools and other institutions to host a three-day training program for public school teachers from K-12 on Cuban history and the Cuban-American experience.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Together with CasaCuba and other FIU units, CRI is proud to cosponsor the launching of Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala's new discographic project, entitled "Un viejo amor" ("An Old Love").

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

This lecture by Dr. Adriana Méndez Rodenas encompasses a review of recordings of "la tumba francesa" held at the Díaz-Ayala Collection, focusing on the musicality of the dance, its connections to Afro-Cuban music, and its survival as a dance form. "La tumba francesa" emerges in Cuban literature and film at pivotal moments in the island’s history—the waning of the war of 1895 and the transition to socialism in 1961—, making a singular contribution to Cuban cultural identity.

July

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

This lecture by Ned Sublette will focus on developing a curriculum for a college course to be called "Introduction to the Cuban Discography." The presentation will include an overall survey of the Díaz-Ayala Collection and its holdings; scrutiny of the earliest recordings in the collection; a survey of rumba and Afro-Cuban religious recordings; a focus on the Cuban independent labels that grew up in the wake of Panart Records; and a contrast of pre- and post-revolutionary production.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

As Cuba continues to expand Internet access and as citizens challenge state policies on the speed, breadth, and freedom of that access, this volume edited by Ted Henken and Sara García Santamaría provides a fascinating example of the impact of technology in authoritarian states and transitional democracies. While the streets of Cuba may still belong to Castro’s Revolution, this volume argues, it is still unclear to whom Cuban cyberspace belongs.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Join us for a timely conversation about the recent street protests in Cuba and their implications for the Island, U.S.-Cuba relations, the Cuban diaspora, and the broader region.

August

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Join us for a virtual panel discussion featuring contemporary Cuban artists and critics who will reflect on the significance of artistic performance and political unrest in the context of the recent street protests on the Island.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

This lecture by Jenny Macías Chaveco will analyze photographs that appeared in the Cuban press in April 1980, which tended to represent Mariel émigrés as criminal and marginal subjects.

September

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Venue:Online on Crowdcast

This memoir by Dr. Oliva Espín moves between Cuba and the United States in a moving narrative authored by a feminist educator who left her mark in the United States and Latin America. Her tales of growing up in pre-Castro Cuba vividly and poignantly evoke a long-gone era.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Organized by the Miami Center for Architecture and Design (MCAD), this panel discussion will focus on a Modernist icon, designed by architect Hilario Candela, FAIA, known throughout the world as an architectural marvel because of its cantilevered, fold-plate roof and construction of lightweight, poured-in-place concrete.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

Award-winning historian Dr. Ada Ferrer delivers an ambitious and moving chronicle written for a moment that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, "Cuba: An American History" provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

This book by Dr. Carmen Lamas demonstrates how Latinos have been integral to US and Latin American literature and history since the early nineteenth century. In particular, it examines how Cuban literature and the experience of Afro Latina/os are deeply imbricated in the Latina/o experience.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Written by Dr. Elaine Acosta González, this report describes the origins, evolution, and current status of Cuba's medical brigades in nine countries, including Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil. Among other topics, the report analyzes the strategy deployed by the Cuban government during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the possible impact of the brigades on the island's health system.

October

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Venue:Wertheim Performing Arts Center, 10910 SW 17th ST, Miami, FL 33199

Join us for our opening night festival—a celebration of Cuban heritage! From Ernesto Lecuona and Moisés Simons to Beny Moré and many more featured surprises, including the orchestral world premiere of Lecuona's "Rumba-Rhapsody," get ready for an evening filled with the classical and unmistakable rhythms of Havana featuring the FIU Symphony Orchestra, joined by pianist Tomas Y. Tirino, the Miami Children's Chorus, and more!

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

"Piano Lessons" is a feature-length documentary that explores the relationship between an artist and his mentor and the value that this personal relationship can have in the process of artistic development. The man and artist at the center of this story is Germán Diez Nieto, a Cuban pianist whose devotion to teaching has touched and formed generations of accomplished classical musicians. "Piano Lessons" follows Francesca Khalifa, one of Diez Nieto's last pupils, during her research on his life.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Organized by FIU's Center for the Humanities in an Urban Environment, this panel discussion addresses the troubling problem of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in the United States and Latin America by centering the voices of Afro-Latinx and Indigenous scholars and artists. The event will take place in Spanish, with English subtitles available on Zoom.

November

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

In this book, Dr. Melissa Fuster thinks expansively about the multiple meanings of "comida," food, from something as simple as a meal to something as complex as one's identity. She listens intently to the voices of New York City residents with Cuban, Dominican, or Puerto Rican backgrounds, as well as to those of the nutritionists and health professionals who serve them.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

In addition to analyzing May’s plagiarism, this presentation by Dr. Justo Planas will examine his work as a critical reinterpretation of Frédéric Miahle's engravings, the most extensive visual account of nineteenth-century Cuba. Although the pictures that May sold in Havana were created in Europe, they succeeded in identifying the social tensions in the Spanish colony.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Crowdcast

Dr. Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an art form that became a darling of the Cuban revolution: dance. In this history of staged performance in ballet, modern dance, and folkloric dance, Schwall analyzes how and why dance artists interacted with republican and, later, revolutionary politics.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

This volume, edited by Dr. Elaine Acosta González, helps to understand the challenges facing Cuban society in terms of care and well-being, through an interdisciplinary and diverse perspective regarding different theoretical and methodological approaches on the subject. The book covers various groups that require care (the elderly, children, and people with disabilities), to show some components of this crisis (demographic, legal, political, ethical, and economic).

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

The San Isidro Movement (MSI, for its Spanish initials) has often been pictured as a new artistic and political movement in Cuba. This lecture by Dr. Marie Laure Geoffray will present a tentative genealogy of the MSI and then focus on what's actually new as far as this movement.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

The exodus that occurred during the first few years of the Cuban Revolution brought to the U.S. many lawyers who initially were under the impression that their stay in the U.S. would be temporary and hoped to return home as soon as the nascent communist regime was toppled. This presentation by Professor Manuel Gómez will describe the struggle and adaptation of the Cuban legal diaspora in Miami and its impact on the local practice of law and on the legal professions in general.

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Venue:Virtual Event on Zoom

Drawing on eighteen interviews in Havana, Matanzas, and Sagua la Grande, this presentation by Sergio Angel investigates the strategies used by ordinary Cubans to gain their livelihoods and survive until the end of the month. In the end, an answer to the question based on the concept of "daily resistance" is presented, highlighting the routes used to meet basic needs in a context of extreme restrictions and difficulties.