Academics from around the Americas will convene for a Latin American Studies Conference on “Cuba in the 21st Century” Thursday and Friday, April 28 and 29, at Cal State San Bernardino.
Raul Fernandez, a professor emeritus at UC Irvine, and Eberto Garcia, perhaps the most popular actor in Cuba today and a professor of contemporary theater at the Instituto Superior de Arte, La Habana, are the keynote speakers for the conference.
Fernandez, who will talk about “Composing Cuba in the Twenty-First Century,” has focused his research on economic and cultural dealings between the U.S. and Latin America. He is currently chair of the multi-campus University of California-CUBA Academic Initiative.
Garcia has more than 60 leading roles to his credit and has been an ambassador for Cuban cinema at festivals the world over. He’ll discuss today’s scene in Cuban theater during the conference.
The conference will address several major topics. They are Afro-Caribbean culture and literature, education in Latin America and José Martí in the 20th century. Discussions also will tackle nationalism and Mexican identity, Latinos in the United States, the role of the press in Latin America and themes in Latin American literature.
Besides Cal State San Bernardino, participants from California State University campuses in Fullerton, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Pomona will attend the conference, as well as educators from the University of California, Riverside and UCLA. Also attending are affiliates from the College of Charleston in South Carolina, Instituto de Arte, La Habana, Saint Mary’s College of California, Truman State University in Missouri and the University of Missouri-Columbia.
At day’s end on April 28, the conference will feature the acclaimed documentary, “Maestra.” The 2012 half-hour film, directed by Catherine Murphy, follows the youngest women teachers of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign. That year, Cuba set out to eradicate illiteracy across the island. It sent 250,000 volunteers to teach reading and writing in rural communities for one year. One-hundred-thousand of the volunteers were under 18. More than half of them were women.
The film is being screened at 4:30 p.m. in PL5005.
The Latin American Studies Conference is sponsored by several CSUSB offices and organizations. They are the College of Arts and Letters, the University Diversity Committee, John M. Pfau Library Services, Center for International Student Programs, the CSUSB Department of World Languages and Literatures and the Assosiation of Latin American Studies.
The conference begins at 8 a.m. each day with a continental breakfast and registration. Sessions will be held at various locations in the Santos Manuel Student Union and the Commons.
For more information, call M. Antonieta Gallegos-Ruiz, CSUSB professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies Conference coordinator, at (909) 537-5858 or email her at agallrui@csusb.edu.