Cuban Intersections of Literary and Urban Spaces

Edited by Carlos Riobó
Introduction by Carlos Riobó

Subjects: Urban Studies
Paperback : 9781438442563, 157 pages, October 2011

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Part I. Introduction
Cuban Intersections of Writing and Space: Colonial Foundations and Neobaroque Orígenes
Carlos Riobó
Part II. Urban Spaces
1. Urban Gardens: Private Property or the Ultimate Socialist Experience?”
Marina Gold
2. Absence Makes the State Grow Stronger: Preliminary Thoughts on Revolutionary Space, Spectacle, and State Legitimacy”
Thomas F. Carter
3. Between History and Modernity: Searching for Lo Cubano in Modern Cuban Architecture
Gabriel Fuentes
Part III. Havana as Nexus: Privileged Literary and Architectural Sites
4. A Look at the Style of Great Houses of Havana, 1860–1960
Hermes Mallea
5. Hacia una estética de lo violento en Las bestias de Ronaldo Menéndez y en La sombra del caminante de Ena Lucía Portela
Elena Adell
Part IV. Cuban Libraries and Culture on the Move
6. Cuba Book Project: Innovative Ways to Support Cuban Libraries
Kenneth Schlesinger
7. Impact of the Bookmobile to Cuba Project on Library Outreach Services in Granma Province, Cuba
Rhonda L. Neugebauer and Dana Lubow

8. Reading and Researching: Challenges and Strategies for Cubans
Peter T. Johnson

Index

A collection of essays on theories of space in relation to Havana.

Description

Cuban Intersections of Literary and Urban Spaces examines Havana as a center where urban and literary spaces often come together. The idea for this collection of essays grew out of an international conference on Cuba, Cuba Futures: Past and Present, held by the City University of New York's Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at CUNY's Graduate Center in 2011, but evolved out of a collaboration with scholars in the fields of literature, architecture, urban planning, and library science. The topics addressed peek at a dynamic Cuban nation through its cultural interstices at a crucial moment in the island's evolving history. This conference proceeding opens with a piece on the intersections between Havana's colonial built environment and the literary aesthetic of the Baroque in the Caribbean. The collection continues with the following areas of study: urban gardens, urban planning, architecture, literary projections on space, international relations and cultural institutions, access to books, and social policies.

Carlos Riobó is Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature and Cultures at the City University of New York. He is also the author of Sub-Versions of the Archive: Manuel Puig's and Severo Sarduy's Alternative Identities.