Cuban Diasporas Across Time: Dialogue and Divergence

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

For more than 200 years, Cubans outside the island have been integral products of and active participants in Cuban history. Typically, however, studies of Cuban diasporic communities are delimited by geography (Miami, Spain) or chronology (colony, republic, revolution). Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars studying Cuban diasporas in the colonial, revolutionary, and post-socialist eras, and across various locales, this panel seeks to foster a wider conversation about the role of diaspora in Cuban history and culture over time. What have all Cuban diasporas shared in common? In what ways has their role in Cuban life changed? Panelists share a particular interest in the material and nonmaterial (i.e. digital) flows of goods, objects, resources, and ideas that serve to link island and diaspora together across time, albeit under fraught terms.

Sub Track

• Migration, Latinos, Diásporas

Session Organizer

• Michael Bustamante, Florida International University

Chair

• Romy Sanchez, Université Caen Normandie

Individual Presentations

• Leaving the Ever Faithful Island: Cuban Exiles’ Political and Material Cultures in the Mid-19th Century - Romy Sanchez, Université Caen Normandie

• Cold War Paquetería: Snail Mail Services Across (and Around) Cuba’s “Sugar Curtain” - Michael Bustamante, Florida International University

• "The Mula Ring": Material and Digital Flows between Miami and Cuba - Jennifer H Cearns, University College London

• La Lenin is my Passport: Schooling, Mobility and Belonging in Socialist Cuba and its Diaspora - Mette Louise Berg, University College London