Contributed by Jacqueline Loss

Spanish PhD student, Inileidys Hernández, sent a letter to me and other faculty expressing the social and psychological weight that the July 2021 unprecedented protests in Cuba had on her, her family, and the many members of our UConn community whose lives were linked to the crises on the island. Her letter hit hard, and it inspired us.

The fall 2022 event series, “Faces, Masks, Bodies: Contemporary Cuban Writing, Art, and Performance,” emerged from that inspiration. Professor Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann, Inileidys, and I garnered support for the series from so many units across campus: Humanities Institute; El Instituto; ELIN Fire Fund; Luis B. Eyzaguirre Fund; Spanish; Literatures, Cultures & Languages; Journalism; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Africana Studies; Art and Art History; Arts and Human Rights Research Program; Human Rights; John N. Plank Lecture Series; and the Creative Writing Program.

Those who attended September 20’s session with visual artists Paola Martínez Fiterre, Gigi de la Torre, and critic/curator Mailyn Machado will never forget the intimate expressions that are overlayed upon the images of resistance to the obligations of womanhood and Cubanness.

Carla Gloria Colomé Santiago’s October 4th discussion, “La mujer y la crónica en el siglo XXI,” continued the discussion by delving into the personal stories she covers as a journalist and the mechanisms she utilizes to cover the human impact of sociopolitical circumstances in Cuba and the diaspora.

On October 11, performance artist Yali Romagoza came on “stage” just outside of UConn’s Contemporary Art Galleries (with the incredible support of Professor Macushla Robinson and her students), dressed as a Latinx rendition of a cuquita, the paper-cut-out doll from her Cuban childhood, and our audience faced her challenge to so-called correct female comportment. Gertrudis Rivalta, Black Cuban multimedia artist, had already projected her version of these cut-out dolls on all the walls. It was as if Rivalta created a home for Romagaza within dioramas filled with cuquitas that she created. Whether that home was comfortable was a question the audience was left to ponder.

 

 

Guillermina De Ferrari, scholar of Caribbean art and literature and our guest for the Luis B. Eyzaguirre Memorial Lecture, presented her lecture later that day, posing several challenging questions around the politics of care and dissent in contemporary Cuban artistic production and inspiring a rich, multidisciplinary debate.

 

Osdany Morales, whose short stories and novels resist facile national characterizations, visited us for a fruitful discussion on November 1st.

Fiction writer and journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez brought us an especially acerbic portrayal of the institution of the press on a global level on November 8th. The generosity of his engagement led to a myriad of questions on the market, truth-telling, and fiction vs. journalism.

The series finale featured UConn’s own Eilyn Lombard Cabrera and Jamila Medina (Brown University), led by Professor Gonzalez Seligmann, who has translated these and other Cuban poets. Audiences were captured by their evocative verses on motherhood, sexuality, immigration, and poetry.

Check out the videos of these events on El Instituto’s YouTube channel, which we have thanks to Kimberly Vasquez, if you missed them live.

Contributed by Emma Amador

Over the past ten years I have been researching and writing about the life and work of Dr. Antonia Pantoja, Black Puerto Rican Civil Rights activist, scholar, and educator whose work changed the world. While writing my first book, The Politics of Care: Puerto Ricans, Citizenship, and Migration after 1917 on the history of Puerto Rican care workers, social work, and the history of social welfare programs, I found Pantoja to be a very important part of the story that I wanted to tell. As a social worker and educator Pantoja innovated a community organizing approach in the institutions she built, and she helped inspire new generations to organize politically. My research led me to begin dreaming about writing a book about Pantoja that would introduce more readers, students, and policymakers to her life and legacy.

This fall, the University of Connecticut’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences supported my research by funding my proposal with a CLAS Faculty Funding in Academic Themes Grant. This funding will allow me to begin writing the book, Bright Futures: Antonia Pantoja and the Practice of Ethnic Studies. This monograph will be the first book-length biography about Pantoja, and it will aim to introduce readers to her life and to examine her political work and contributions to the history of education in the United States. From the 1940s through the early 2000s Pantoja fought for education centered on the lives and experiences of people of color, Latino/a/xs, Black diasporic communities, and Spanish speakers in the US. Her work was shaped by her own experiences as a Black Puerto Rican, Afro-Latina, and lesbian who proudly came to identify as “Nuyorican.” This biography will explore how Pantoja— in dialogue with the communities in which she lived—merged community organizing approaches with radical social work methods to create a practice of “doing” Ethnic Studies in collaboration with these communities and her students. These practices envisioned bright futures for all people, especially people of color. They also can provide powerful models and tools for those of us learning about and teaching Ethnic Studies today.

My biography of Pantoja closely relates to my role as an educator teaching at UConn. One of my favorite courses to teach is “Latina History and Biography,” a class that examines the historical experiences of Latinas in the United States through a focus on life history, biography, memoir, and testimonio. In this course, my students love learning about Pantoja, and my discussions with students over the years has deeply shaped the project. It is my student’s thirst for more knowledge about Pantoja, Ethnic Studies, and the history of Latinas, that inspires and enriches this project. This summer I will present some of my preliminary work on Bright Futures and my broader research on Latina history and biography at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women alongside other Latina feminist biographers.

 

Hello, everyone! I’m Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann; also known as KGS (they or she pronouns). I’m the new Interim Director of El Instituto, and I have been truly lucky to be in the process of getting to know the faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff of our Instituto community so far. For those of you who do not know me, I’m a scholar of Caribbean literature and intellectual history as well as a literary translator.  I’m joint-appointed in El Instituto and the Spanish section of the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. A U.S. American of Cuban, Colombian, and Jewish heritage, I grew up in the Latinx majority cities of Miami and San Antonio, and I came to UConn last year from from Emerson College in Boston, where I taught for six years.  I’m fascinated to work in Connecticut, which is full of Latinx and Caribbean majority spaces, even if the University does not yet reflect that reality.

Core and affiliated faculty, staff, and students at El Instituto and our partners in La Comunidad Intelectual (LCI), and the Puerto Rican/ Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC) are dedicated to creating Latinx-centered intellectual and social spaces. But our impact seems to depend on visibility, and we are up against a major, ongoing obstacle to that visibility: the under-education of the U.S. populace about Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, the country at large seems to ignore the role of United States intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean that connects to the history of immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States. These histories and ongoing circumstances shape Latinx and Caribbean diaspora communities throughout the country and right here in Connecticut. The massive neglect in knowledge about our communities becomes increasingly acute during times like these, when the damage experienced in the Caribbean by recent hurricanes massively impacts our communities but appears to go unnoticed by so many around us.

 I hope that this year brings greater visibility to Latina/o/x, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies at UConn. We newly offer the Latina/o studies minor at UConn Hartford, we have an incredible cohort of graduate and undergraduate students, and we have welcomed a new Visiting Assistant Professor of Latina/o Studies, Bethsaida Nieves. We have a new partnership with the Puerto Rican Studies Initiative for Community Engagement and Public Policy, led by core faculty member, Charles R. Venator-Santiago. We also have a new Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies research librarian, Jennifer Schaefer.  We also have an exciting events calendar this year. Please spread the word about our course offerings, and if you haven’t already, please be sure to sign up for our listserv.

Bienvenides a La Voz,

Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann

Contributed by Anne Gebelein

Students Travel to the U.S./Mexico Border to Learn about Collective Action for Social and Immigrant Justice

From May 19-May 29^th, 10 students joined Professor Anne Gebelein at the border to learn more about the network of activist groups that organize to support the rights of both immigrants and border residents. Tucson AZ is a special place in which to study organizing, as it hosts a wide, interconnected network of agencies and citizen advocacy groups that work collaboratively to promote the rights of all peoples in the region. The program was hosted by Borderlinks, an educational non-profit born in the 1980s to contextualize the sanctuary movement started by the First Presbyterian Church. Church members protected asylum seekers escaping U.S.-backed torture in Central America, and their movement became a nationwide phenomenon, as over 500 churches ultimately housed vulnerable migrants and paved the way for current sanctuary church practices.

Students met with activists, traveled to 2 border towns in Mexico, spent time at the border wall, participated in workshops hosted by Borderlinks, and listened to UConn faculty experts lecture about border issues via webex. They hiked in the desert, placed water for people in danger of dehydration, attended a mariachi mass, and visited a migrant shelter. Students examined intersections of immigration, gender identity, asylum, collective action and art. They also had time to explore Tucson, a vibrant city with a rich artistic tradition influenced by Mexican muralism and tilework. Students earned 3 credits in LLAS or HRTS from participating in the program and course, which was designed by many hands: Anne Gebelein, Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, Kathryn Libal, Megan Berthold and Rodolfo Fernandez. Professor Fernandez will run the course from May 18th-28th in 2023.

 

Contributed by Charles R. Venator-Santiago

The Puerto Rican Studies Initiative for Community Engagement and Public Policy (PRSI) is a research initiative that can help document and support the Puerto Ricans’ vital economic, intellectual, and cultural contributions to Connecticut and provide research-based support for the development of public policies addressing the needs of Puerto Ricans in the State of Connecticut. This initiative is part of a collaboration with El Instituto (CLAS, UConn Storrs) and the Puerto Rican and Latin@ Studies Project (School of Social Work, UConn Hartford).

Professor Charles R. Venator-Santiago was awarded a $500,000 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant from the Connecticut General Assembly for 2022 and 2023. Professor Venator-Santiago presently holds a joint appointment between the Department of Political Science and El Instituto.

 

This year, the PRSI will focus on the following areas of research:

1. Data Analysis. Drawing on publicly available data, the PRSI will release a series of data sheets and reports designed to create a profile of Connecticut’s Puerto Rican residents.
2. Research Reports. The PRSI will conduct several research studies and publish detailed reports on the findings. This year the PRSI will focus on a series of reports that focus on structural challenges for Puerto Rican electoral participation, small business access to capital (in collaboration with Professor Jorge Aguero), and climate driven emergency response (in collaboration with the Caribbean Preparedness and Response non-profit), Congressional opinions about the Puerto Rican political status (in collaboration with Professor José Javier Colón Morera – University of Puerto Rico)
3. Oral Histories. Working in collaboration with Professor Fiona Vernal and the Engaged Public, Oral and Community Histories (EPOCH) program, the PRSI will begin to build a public repository of oral histories from Puerto Rican community leaders in Connecticut.
4. Public Archives. The PRSI will build 3-4 public archives/repositories of primary documents including the Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project (revised), the Puerto Rico Federal Status Archives Project, and the 1909 Survey of Puerto Rican Elites. Accompanying publications for each archive will also be released.
5. Civic Engagement. The PRSI will also promote a series of collaborations to promote civic engagement among Puerto Ricans in Connecticut. These collaborations include a civic education television series with El Show de Analeh (Univision), bringing programing to local community venues, and organizing a series of symposia and meetings.
6. Academic Activities. We are also committed to developing a series of institutional projects including the creation of a Puerto Rican Studies peer-reviewed journal and an academic association tentatively titled Society for the Study of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans,

Please contact Charles R. Venator-Santiago for more information about the Puerto Rican Studies Initiative.

 

Contributed by Anne Gebelein 

Dr. Anne Gebelein of El Instituto, Dr. Fiona Vernal of Africana Studies Institute, and Dr. Jason Chang of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute are collaborating in an effort to help CT teachers better understand the role that Puerto Rican, West Indian, and African American migrants have played in the state’s historically most significant crop. They have teamed up with Tom Thurston of Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center and doctoral candidate at University of Michigan Elena Rosario to deliver workshops on Agricultural Labor in CT’s Shade Tobacco Industry. This fall series is part of a 3-part, yearlong program funded by the CT Humanities to assist teachers in developing new materials in the state-mandated course on African American, Latino, and Puerto Rican history. Gebelein and Vernal have been involved in conversations in the development of the course, and Chang has been instrumental in the development of a new high school course on Asian American and Pacific Islander history that will begin in 2025.

This ongoing collaboration between UConn’s cultural institutes, Yale’s Lehrman Center, the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective is known as the Black and Latino History Project. Its aim is to support teachers in the teaching of the new high school course and in teaching more inclusive history. Gebelein is organizing the fall series on Agricultural Labor in Shade Tobacco; Dr Daniel Hosang Martinez of Yale is organizing an early spring series on Eugenics; and Vernal is organizing a late spring series on Black and Puerto Rican Migration.

 

If you know of any educators or graduate students interested in teaching these topics, it is not too late to register or view online materials. Contact anne.gebelein@uconn.edu or go to https://www.blhp.yale.edu/ for more information.