This course seeks to ground students’ understanding of contemporary Cuba within the global context. How do those outside the island imagine Cuba and why? What are the realities? In a world of U.S. dominated globalization, we have only recently begun to relax a forceful economic blockade on the island: What does the U.S. mean in the Cuban imaginary, both in the past and in the present? To attend to global processes as they affect local (Cuban) experience, we will draw on texts from anthropology, history, policy, literature, film, and music. In the process, students will learn how longstanding patterns regarding race, color, class, and gender relations have evolved in(to) the socialist, and now the “post-socialist,” context.
Professor Kaifa Roland
See the University Catalog for specifics, recommendations, and prerequisites.