Cuban Studies & Latina Feminisms, A Proposal

• In Event: The Intersections Between Cuban Studies and Latina Feminisms

Abstract

This essay will contextualize the presentations of the other panelists. I will explain the benefits that the approaches of Latina Feminisms have to the analysis of gender among those whose scholarship is associated with Cuban Studies. At the same time, I will analyze how the realities of the Cuban diaspora provides a unique example for Latina Feminisms in its interest in identities defined by multiplicity, and its analysis of power and location. The advantages of intersectionality in the context of the analyzing Cuban literature will take the first part of the essay. In the second, I will analyze how the development of diasporic and transatlantic perspectives in the study of Cuban culture can be important as a model for the future development of Latina Feminist thought produced in the United States. I will show how the commonalities between Cubans living in the diaspora and Latinas living in the United States, can provide us a very unique way to understand gendered identities. This essay, and the panel itself, will provide a different approach to the study of Literature through its links with Philosophy, something that has been developed by the Cuban philosophers Ofelia Schutte and Jorge Gracia, but still remains mostly underexplored. It is for this reason that at the conclusion of my essay I will trace the importance that this approach has for the development of Latin American Studies in general.

Author

• Adriana I Novoa, University of South Florida