Thursday, 26 February 2015
12 – 2 p.m.
Fordham Law School
Bateman Room, 2nd Floor

Event description from website:

In a historic broadcast, Presidents Obama and Castro simultaneously announced the normalization of diplomatic ties between Cuba and the United States, severed in January of 1961. The aim of this policy change, President Obama explained, is to “unleash the potential of 11 million Cubans” to create a more democratic and prosperous social and economic system. In this panel renowned Cuba scholars, humanitarian aid and cultural activists, and artists Margaret Crahan, Sujatha Fernandes, and Achy Obejas explore the impact of the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations on the empowerment of the Cuban people, on humanitarian assistance to the island, and on the relationship to Latin America and U.S. Latinos.

Participating scholars:

Margaret E. Crahan, Ph.D., is director of the Cuba Program at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University. She has been the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Power and Political Process at Occidental College, and is currently the vice president of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights.

Sujatha Fernandes, Ph.D., is associate professor of sociology at Queens College, CUNY, and author of Cuba Represent!: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures, which combines social theory and political economy with in-depth, engaged ethnography to explore social agency in post-Soviet Cuba through the arts.

Achy Obejas is the acclaimed Cuban-American author of the novels Ruins and Days of Awe, the translator into Spanish of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and a journalist and blogger of renown.

Lunch will be served.

For more information or to RSVP, contact Latin American and Latino Studies Institute at 718-817-4792 or lalsi@fordham.edu.