FIU Graduate Student Awarded Cuban Heritage Collection Fellowship

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The Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami Libraries has awarded Zeila Frade a graduate fellowship to pursue her research during the summer of 2014. Her project is titled "Children's Literature, Ideology, and Cultural Identity before and after the Cuban Revolution."

Frade's research explores how social and cultural factors directly affected Cuban children's literature. It departs from José Martí's 1889 landmark La edad de oro and continues with the following periods: Republican (1902-1958), 1959-1989, and finally from 1989 to the present. Drawing on critical studies from Cuban writers and intellectuals such as Jorge Mañach, Fernando Ortiz, and Rafael Rojas, Frade analyzes the representation and creation of national identity and the function of ideology in the writing of the most significant authors of children's literature of each period in relation to their particular social and political circumstances.

Zeila Frade is a literary researcher and professor, born in Havana in 1984 and residing in the United States. Currently she is a Ph.D. candidate and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Modern Languages at Florida International University. She has taught university-level courses since 2008 and has presented her research at various national universities. Since 2010 she has been a member of the Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica Sigma Delta Pi and has been affiliated with the Modern Languages Association since 2008.