Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grants

Image: cristobal-diaz-ayala.jpg
Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala

Application Deadline: Friday, March 15, 2024

All application materials should be submitted to cri@fiu.edu

2024 Application Form
2024 Budget Estimate

Every year, the Cuban Research Institute (CRI), the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, and Florida International University Libraries offer the Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grants to study the special collections related to Cuba and Cuban Americans. These awards are offered in honor of Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala, the prominent music collector and independent scholar who donated his Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection to FIU in 2001. The grants provide scholars and graduate students the opportunity to conduct research on Cuba and its diaspora at the FIU Green Library, thereby expanding access to the library's unique holdings and enhancing its value as a national resource.

CRI, LACC, and FIU Libraries offer research stipends of up to $2,000 each to offset the costs of a minimum one-week stay (five working days) in Miami to use the collections. Scholars in the humanities and the social sciences whose work will be enhanced by using the resources of the collections are encouraged to apply. Priority is given to scholars who are not previous recipients of the award. Two of the awards are given to U.S.-based scholars or graduate students, in accordance with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Grant. Those residing in other countries are encouraged to apply for the remaining grant.

As a condition of the award, recipients give one lunchtime lecture at FIU for faculty and students on their recent research, and following their travel, submit a one-page single-spaced summary of their work with the collections, and make recommendations on how the collections may be improved or enhanced. Any publications resulting from research conducted at FIU during the grant period should acknowledge the Cuban Research Institute, the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, FIU Libraries, and the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Grant for their support.

The Díaz-Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection is the most extensive publicly available collection of Cuban music in the United States. Its approximately 150,000 items span the history of popular Cuban and other Latin musics. Originally valued at nearly one million dollars, the collection features 45,000 LPs; 15,000 78 rpms; 4,500 cassettes containing interviews with composers and musicians, radio programs, music, and other materials; 5,000 pieces of sheet music; 3,000 books; and thousands of CDs, photographs, videocassettes, and paper files. Among the collection's rarest items are early recordings made in prerevolutionary Cuba.

A portion of the collection can be searched online here. However, the vast majority of items are only searchable and accessible in person. Supplementing the Díaz-Ayala Music Collection is an excellent and varied collection of Cuban and Cuban-American materials and electronic resources available at the FIU Libraries. For more information on the Díaz-Ayala Music Collection and other collections, and to determine if your research project will be enhanced by the Díaz-Ayala Music Collection, please contact the Sound & Image Resources Department at FIU Libraries.

Previous Awardees

Past recipients of the award have included the following scholars:

  • Dr. Gabriela Alfaraz, Michigan State University, "Linguistic Change in Cuban Spanish" (Summer 2016)
  • Dr. Galina Bakhtiarova, Western Connecticut State University, "Cuando salí de La Habana: The Habanera beyond the Caribbean" (Spring 2005)
  • Dr. Charisse Baldoria, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, "The Piano in Expressions of Cuban Identity: Stylizing Folk and Popular Styles" (Summer 2010)
  • Matthew R. Berger, independent scholar, "La Batería: Jazz and the Drum Set in Cuba" (Summer 2015)
  • Yurima Blanco García, University of Valladolid, Spain, "The Lyric Theater in Expressions of Cuban Identity: Study and Reconstruction of El sombrero de Yarey, Opera by Ernesto Lecuona" (Spring 2018)
  • Hannah Burgé Luviano, Queens University, Canada, "The Ajiaco of Mambo: Transnational Pathways in the Mexico City Mambo Bands of Dámaso Pérez Prado" (Summer 2023)
  • Dr. Beatriz Calvo-Peña, Christopher Newport University, "Hermanas Márquez: Playing Guaracha and Son since the 1930s" (Spring 2007)
  • Dr. Madeline Cámara, University of South Florida, "White Skins, Black Masks: The Mulatta in the Zarzuela and Cinema about Rumberas in Cuba" (Summer 2006)
  • Dr. Jorge Camacho, University of South Carolina, "A History of José Martí's Archive" (Summer 2018)
  • Dr. Amaya Carricaburu Collantes, International University of Valencia, Spain, "The Cuban Punto: The Study of Its Discography during the Period 1906–1958" (Spring 2024)
  • Liliana Casanella Cué, Center for Research and Development of Cuban Music, Havana, Cuba, "The Guaracha: Approaching National Identity through Its Texts" (Summer 2016)
  • Dr. Anita Casavantes Bradford, University of California, Irvine, "Remembering Pedro Pan: Faith, Family, Freedom, and Cuban-American Collective Memory" (Summer 2014)
  • Dr. María Elena Cobas Cobiella, University of Valencia, Spain, "The Mario Díaz Cruz Law Collection: Studies and Reflections on the Topic" (Summer 2015)
  • Gilberto Conill Godoy, Universidad Jaume I, Spain, "The Miami Sound: An Analysis of the Sociocultural Movement, Its Significance and Impact" (Summer 2013)
  • Barry Cox, musician and independent scholar, "Toward a History of Rumba on Record, 1899–1948" (Summer 2011)
  • Dean Craven, King's College, London, "Manufacturing Montuno, Manufacturing Identity: Human Agency and Improvisation of Piano Accompaniments in Cuban Dance Musics" (Summer 2019)
  • Emilio Cueto, independent scholar, "The Province of Oriente in Music" (Summer 2013)
  • Dr. Duanel Díaz Infante, Virginia Commonwealth University, "Sweetness and Cubanness: The Place of Sugar in the Cuban Imagination" (Summer 2013)
  • Michael Eckroth, New York University, "The Popular Cuban Piano Style of the 1940s and 1950s" (Summer 2012)
  • Dr. Jorge Felipe-González, University of Texas, San Antonio, "The Cuban Slave Trade: An Atlantic History" (Summer 2022)
  • Dr. Manuel Fernández, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, "Trauma, Identity, and Nation in Music of the Cuban Community in the U.S." (Summer 2010)
  • Yesenia Fernández Selier, New York University, "The Circulation of Cuban Cultural Production before 1930 in the Caribbean" (Summer 2017)
  • Dr. Licia Fiol-Matta, Lehman College (CUNY), "Latin Music: Gender Narratives, Female Figurations" (Spring 2006)
  • Dr. David Font-Navarrete, Lehman College, CUNY, "Art at the Edge of Tradition: Notes on Orisha and Music in the Age of Multimedia, 1936–2021" (Summer 2021)
  • Dr. David García, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "Afro-Cuban Jazz: Beyond 'Rhythm' and the Primitivist Myth" (Summer 2005)
  • Andrés García Molina, Columbia University, "Aural Economies and Precarious Labor: El pregón, or Street Vendor Songs in Cuba" (Summer 2019)
  • Dr. Lillian Guerra, University of Florida, "Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961–81" (Summer 2019)
  • Dr. Adrian H. Hearn, University of Technology, Sidney, Australia, "Musical Bridges between Cuba and China" (Summer 2008)
  • Dr. Marta Hernández, Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, "Caribbean Children's Music: Rhythms, Melodies, and Lyrics" (Summer 2017)
  • Juliet Hill, London University, "The Piano in the Cuban Conjunto, 1940–51" (Summer 2006)
  • Sophia Kitlinksi, Yale University, "Deporting the Sacred: The Circulation of Abakuá Visual and Material Worlds across the Spanish Empire, 1875–1898" (Summer 2022)
  • Dr. Benjamin Lapidus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), "Como un milagro: The Musical Influence of Juanito Márquez on the Popular Song of Four Continents" (Summer 2015)
  • Kimiko Nicole LeNeave, University of California, San Diego, "Rhythms of Revolution: A Cold War History of Cuban-Chilean Cultural Exchange and Political Transformation" (Summer 2022)
  • Dr. Noriko Manabe, Princeton University, "A Mulata's Memory: Musical Mestizaje in the Characterization of Femmes Fatales in Cuban Zarzuelas" (Summer 2007)
  • Dr. Adriana Méndez Rodenas, University of Missouri, "Transculturated Poetics: La Tumba Francesa and Cuban Cultural Identity" (Summer 2021)
  • Dr. Ricardo Pelegrín Taboada, Western Oregon University, "Legal Culture and the Formation of National Identity: The Legal Profession in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Cuba" (Summer 2020)
  • Dr. Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Columbia University, "Cuba in the American Imagination" (Summer 2008)
  • Juliana Pérez González, University of São Paulo, Brazil, "The History of the Concept of 'Popular Music' in Latin America (1890–1930)" (Summer 2011)
  • Dr. Pierpaolo Polzonetti, University of California, Davis, "Cuban Sound Recipes: Songs about Food from Son to Salsa" (Summer 2023)
  • Marysol Quevedo, Indiana University, "Negotiating Cubanness through Art Music: Composers in Socialist Cuba, 1959–1989" (Summer 2014)
  • Josean Ramos, independent scholar and writer, "The Dust Jackets in the Puerto Rican Record Industry" (Summer 2009)
  • Dr. Noraliz Ruiz Caraballo, Hunter College (CUNY), "The Transatlantic and Caribbean Manifestations of Cuban Décimas" (Spring 2016)
  • Dr. Salvador Salazar, Bronx Community College (CUNY), "General History of the Cuban Republic Printed Journalism (1902–1959)" (Summer 2023)
  • Dr. Enrico Mario Santí, University of Kentucky, "Carlos Ripoll's José Martí" (Summer 2017)
  • Ned Sublette, New York University, "Teaching the Cuban Discography" (Summer 2021)
  • Darío Tejeda, General Archive of the Nation, Dominican Republic, "Reinforcement of the Study of 'Music and Dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (1930–1961)'" (Summer 2014)
  • Sarah Town, Princeton University, "Mambomania: The Explosion of Cuban Popular Dance Styles in the 1940s and 1950s" (Summer 2012)
  • Alejandro Ulloa, Universidad del Valle, Colombia, "Musical Cultures and Musical Identities in Salsa" (Spring 2009)
  • Dr. Alexandra T. Vázquez, New York University, "Lost at C: Cuban Women Vocalists in Miami" (Summer 2020; declined)
  • David Virelles González, independent researcher and performing artist, "Tracing the Cinquillo Cubano: De la Trova al Danzón" (Summer 2018)