EL MONTE: Narratives, Aesthetics, and Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean

On the 70th anniversary of the publication of El Monte (1954) by Cuban author and ethnologist Lydia Cabrera, Rutgers University, Baruch College (CUNY), and the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, invite scholars, graduate students, and social and religious activists to discuss pressing issues around Afrodiasporic spirituality and ethnomedicinal technologies in the cultures of the Hispanic Caribbean.

Often taken as a reference text for those initiated into Santeria and other spiritual traditions, El Monte has become not a book but a guiding concept or code to read the evolution of Afrodiasporic culture in the Hispanic Caribbean.

This conference offers a unique opportunity to reflect, from multidisciplinary perspectives, on the complexities and challenging power of Afro-Caribbean agency.

Keynote Speakers:

Mabel Cuesta, University of Houston

Emily Maguire, Northwestern University

Stephan Palmié,The University of Chicago

Conference topics may include but are not limited to:

• Race, migrations and ethnicity in the Caribbean
• Diasporic Caribbean: Authors, intellectuals and artists of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries
• Media Studies and animism
• Popular culture and comparative religion
• Translation and literature: Challenges and controversies
• Cuban literature and Caribbean narratives
• Literary representations of gender relations
• Literature, plastic arts, visual narratives: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Historical approaches to colonial, republican, and post-revolutionary literature and culture
• Caribbean relations in literature and the arts
• Queer approaches and spirituality in Caribbean literature
• Exile and memory