Lillian Guerra, Michelle Chase, and Jennifer Lambe
Revolucionarias: Women and the Formation of the Cuban Nation
Exhibition Opening and Speaker Panel
3 April 2014, 4:30pm – 7:00pm, Smathers Library Room 100 (Formerly 1A)
A panel discussion featuring renowned scholars Lillian Guerra, Michelle Chase, and Jennifer Lambe will be held in conjunction with the opening of the Smathers Libraries exhibition, Revolucionarias: Women and the Formation of the Cuban Nation. Lillian Guerra will provide a brief overview of the exhibition and serve as moderator. Michelle Chase will challenge existing interpretations of the Cuban revolution by showing that, contrary to popular assumptions, women participated in great numbers in the mass movement to oust Fulgencio Batista. Jennifer Lambe will discuss the case of Juana María García, who became notorious during Cuba’s first decade of independence for killing a man who had informed her powerful lover of her infidelity to him.
Lillian Guerra is Professor of Cuban & Caribbean History at the University of Florida and the author of three books. The most recent, Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Resistance and Redemption, 1959-1971, examines internal struggles among pro-revolutionary sectors and a centralizing Cuban state to define the practice and meaning of Communism in everyday culture and economic practice. Her previous books are Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico and The Myth of José Martí: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba.
Michelle Chase is an Assistant Professor of History at Bloomfield College. She specializes in twentieth-century Cuban history. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in The Americas, Bulletin of Latin American Research, The New West Indian Guide and The Sixties. She has also published on contemporary Cuba for The Nation and NACLA Report on the Americas. She is currently writing a book on the role of women and gender in the Cuban Revolution.
Jennifer Lambe is a PhD Candidate in Latin American and Caribbean history at Yale University. Her dissertation, “Baptism by Fire: The Making and Remaking of Madness in Cuba,” explores the history of psychiatry, psychology, and popular mental healing in Cuba from the late colonial period through 1980. Her work has appeared in Cuba: People, Culture, History, ed. Alan West-Durán (2011) and Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, and she has essays forthcoming in Cuban Studies and an edited volume on health and medicine in Cold War Latin America.
Revolucionarias: Women and the Formation of the Cuban Nation is curated by Margarita Vargas-Betancourt and Lillian Guerra. It is on view March 31, 2014 – May 16, 2014 in the Smathers Library Gallery. The exhibition opening and speaker panel will occur on Thursday, April 3 from 4:30-7:00 in Smathers Library Room 100 (formerly 1A).
This event is co-sponsored by the George A. Smathers Libraries, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment), and the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research.
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Lillian Guerra at lillian.guerra@ufl.edu or Lourdes Santamaría-Wheeler at l.s.wheeler@ufl.edu.
2014-03-31