Thirty-five scholars from the U.S., Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and the U.K. gathered at Yale University in early October for a conference on “New Histories of the Cuban Revolution,” convened by Professors Stuart Schwartz and Gilbert Joseph of the Department of History and organized by PhD Candidate Michael Bustamante and recent PhD recipient Jennifer Lambe (Assistant Professor, Brown University). Yale was pleased to welcome to New Haven six scholars from Cuba, who spent their first day on campus speaking with students, touring the campus, and visiting the Cuban Revolution Collection at Manuscripts and Archives.
Conference panelists, who included senior scholars, junior faculty, and advanced graduate students, participated in five panels dedicated to “Revolutionary Transformations and the Politics of the Past,” “Iconic Ecosystems of Revolutionary Statecraft,” “Cultural Battles and Political Hegemony in the 1960s,” “Cuba internacional: Expatriates, Diasporas, Mobilities,” and “Hidden Histories of Revolutionary Change.” The conference also featured a keynote address by Alejandro de la Fuente (Harvard University) and a closing roundtable with senior scholars of Cuba. Overall, participants enjoyed two lively days of discussion and debate, and many promises were made to continue these conversations in future venues. At the end of the conference, all six scholars from Cuba traveled to Brown University for a series of events, including a film series launch, a public roundtable on contemporary Cuba, and a lunchtime presentation at the John Carter Brown Library.
The organizers are very grateful to the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies for its instrumental administrative and logistical support. Other sponsors included the Whitney Humanities Center, Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, Department of History, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and Brown University.