Specters of Cuba: The Cultural Production of the Cuban Revolution
Maymester, 2008
Paul B. Miller, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

The Cuban Revolution is the preeminent historical, ideological and cultural event in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century.  This popular revolution in 1959 has proven be to a thorn in the side of the United States for almost 50 years and has survived the enmity of nine US presidents.  The Revolution has withstood an economic blockade unprecedented in its intensity and duration and the constant threat of invasion and assassination of its leader, Fidel Castro (who, in a recent historical development, resigned the presidency of Cuba on February 19, 2008), through means so bizarre (exploding cigars) that they seem to come out of the pages of a Latin American novel.  Cuba has lost nearly a tenth of its population to emigration; many of these emigrants settled in Miami and formed a powerful political lobby which has disproportionately influenced US foreign policy and even determined indirectly the outcome of a US presidential election in 2000.  Perhaps the emblematic moment of Cuba's rise to international prominence was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, in which the issue of Soviet missiles on this tropical island, only 90 miles from the USA, escaladed into cold-war showdown which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. 
The Cuban Revolution is a transcendent event in the recent history of our hemisphere.   It is essential therefore to understand it in its own terms and outside the demonizing lens of US ideology and foreign policy. To this end, in this seminar we will attempt to assess the complexity of the Cuban Revolution through an examination of its cultural expression.  In addition to studying a historical overview of the Revolution's timeline and evolution, we will especially focus on some of the key cultural achievements in Cuba over the course of the last five decades. We will evaluate the  literary production of writers and artists sympathetic to the Revolution, as well as the younger and often dissident voices in fiction, poetry, music, visual arts and film. 

We will also consider Cuba's rise to international prominence in sports (baseball, boxing, track) and ballet.  Some of the writers will include Alejo Carpentier, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Nicolás Guillén, Nancy Morejón, Reina María Rodríguez, Norberto Fuentes, Calvert Casey, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Heberto Padilla, Senel Paz, Reinaldo Arenas, and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez.   We will study the films of Mikhail Kalatozov, (Soy Cuba/I am Cuba), Gutiérrez Alea, (Memories of Underdevelopment, The Last Supper, Strawberry and Chocolate), Sara Gómez (De cierta manera), Humberto Solas, (Lucía ) Ferando Pérez (Suite Habana, La Vida es Silbar).    Musical artists will include Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Sara González, Carlos Varela, Leo Brouwer and Buena Vista Social Club.  Finally the painters and photographers we study will include Wilfredo Lam, Tomás Sánchez, Carlos Garaicoa, Alexis Leyva (Kcho), Alberto Korda

Course requirements will include short writing assignments over the course of the seminar, a multimedia presentation and a final paper.