Our Students in Havana

From March 14 to March 22, 19 Fordham undergraduates (pictured above) joined art history professor Barbara Mundy and anthropology professor O. Hugo Benavides, for a weeklong course in Cuba through the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies. 

Above, the students are at the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte. From left, they are: Kedwien Valdez, Manuela Rodriguez, Jeandery Suarez, Yani Pena, Alessandro Monetti, Patryk Tomaszewski, Kristine Mijatovich, Allison Pfingst (seated), Amalia Vavala, Sean Coari, Vince Favetta, Pasquale Gianni, Tim Bouffard, James Lassen, Qinrui Hua, Dezsi Desmond, Echo Zhou, Allie Burns, Lauren Kawulicz. The sculpture behind them spells out the word EXILE, which Mundy calls "an appropriate reminder of the complex cultural, linguistic, historical and political moments that Cubans--like so many other Americans in the continent--are living on both sides of the border."

Photo: Allison Pfingst

The weeklong course focused on art, architecture, and life in both pre-Revolution Cuba and now. Casa de las Americas, Cuba's premiere cultural institution, was Fordham's partner in organizing the course. Through the Casa, they were exposed to contemporary Cuban cinema and music. The trip also took them to Havana's Museo de Bellas Artes, where they saw the surrealist-and-santería inspired paintings of Wilfredo Lam and discussed work by contemporary artists as well.

A simple walk in the streets brought students face-to-face with Havana's urban architecture, much of which dates from before 1960.

The class trip culminated in a visit to Havana's National Schools of Art, first envisioned, said Mundy, "during a Che-Fidel golf game in an enthusiastic surge following the Revolution." The Schools' architects used the materials then available (concrete, brick, tile) and pushed the technology of the Catalan vault to new heights, said Mundy.

Mundy described the trip as "an extraordinary experience for us all," in which students and faculty both took advantage of Havana beyond their course activities.

"We listened to Cuban jazz, saw Flamenco dancers, swam in turquoise Caribbean waters, and cheered on Havana's baseball team in a playoff victory (Industriales 9, Santiago de Cuba, 7). Day in and day out, we were able to meet and talk to Cubans, to learn about their experiences living in a country so changed by the Revolution and to share hopes for the future.

"Such encounters are transformative, in that they allow one to see oneself and one's accepted way of life through the eyes of another," said Mundy. (See student and faculty photos  below.)

Photo: Barbara Mundy

Photo: Allison Pfingst

Photo: Lauren Kawulicz

Photo: Lauren Kawulicz

Photo: Tim Bouffard

Photo: Barbara Mundy

Fordham helps host 'Festival de la Palabra'

(R to L) Pedro Antonio Valdez, Luis Negron and Anna Lidia Vega Serova / Photo by Gina Vergel

Fordham recently played host to the third annual Festival de la Palabra / Festival of the Word—an event that celebrates Spanish language writers.

The event began on Oct. 4 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It continued with more than 30 diverse writers from Spain and Latin America at various venues across New York City from Oct. 8-11.

La Festival de la Palabra is an international literary festival that brings together some of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in Spanish with diverse academic and non-academic community audiences to debate, explore, and celebrate writing from Latin America, Spain and its Spanish-speaking diasporas, including the United States, said Mayra Santos-Febres, a Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, and literary critic who has garnered fame at home and abroad for her first two collections of poetry, Anamu y manigua and El orden escapado.

“We know Puerto Rico is a natural destination for so many kinds of tourism,” she says. “Three years ago we asked ourselves, why not host a literary festival in order to attract even more people?”

This year’s festival included writers from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guadaloupe-France, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain to New York City to participate in readings, presentations, for a, debates, and workshops.

At Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Oct. 11, there were readings and discussion on, “Writing (in) the Hispanic Caribbean,” with Anna Lidia Vega Serova of Cuba, Pedro Antonio Valdez of the Dominican Republic, and Luis Negron of Puerto Rico. The event was hosted by the Department of Modern Languages and Literature.

Dominican writer, Valdez, said people have accused be of being too Dominican in his work. Responding to a student question about the inspiration for his stories, he said, “I want to tell the stories of my barrio. I want to impress what it is like to my readers.”

Writer Charlie Vázquez, author of the novel Contraband (Rebel Satori Press, 2010), and the bilingual poems Meditations, coordinated the New York City portion of the festival and helped choose the writers along with Febres and a colleague in Lisbon.

As an active writer, Vázquez says he felt honored to invite friends who are actively writing and publishing to participate in the festival.

“And they, in turn, get to meet writers from around the world,” he said, adding that the festival has inspired him to start writing in Spanish.

“I was educated in English in New York City public schools and brought up in bilingual homes where some of my older relatives only spoke Spanish. One of the things I’ve learned as a result of all of this is that Spanish is more than just a beautiful and popular and inherently poetic language, it’s also a passport to a large portion of the Earth’s readers, on different continents. I have grown as a writer because of it, and that, in itself, is a priceless education,” Vázquez said.

-Gina Vergel