Bridges to Cuba and Latina/Latino Studies

Author(s):  
Ruth Behar

This essay focuses on the complex relationship between Cuban studies and Latina/Latino studies. A full engagement between the two scholarly endeavors is often difficult because of the ongoing efforts at reconciliation among the Cuban people. While more fluidity now exists, there are continuing divisions between Cubans of the island and the diaspora. So long as Cuba continues to be a site of obsessive fascination both to Cuban Americans and to non-Cuban promoters of Cuban identity and culture in the United States, it is challenging for scholars in Cuban studies to address connections with the intersectional approaches at the heart of Latina/Latino studies. Drawing on a personal approach and the author’s own experiences as a scholar, writer, and activist for cultural exchanges with Cuba, this entry explores the generational changes that have taken place in the search for bridges to and from Cuba and how this search for identity and belonging contributes idiosyncratic but important nuances to the field of Latina/Latino studies.

Author(s):  
Brenda Elsey

This essay examines the way in which the Cold War shaped the use of sport as a tool of diplomacy in Latin America during the 1950s. It focuses on the Pan American Games in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. Cultural exchanges failed to dispel suspicion of US intervention; however, athletes shared experiences beyond diplomatic agendas. Recent research has examined how international events shaped participants’ understanding of national, racial, and gender identities. By focusing on women athletes, who historically occupied precarious positions as representatives of the nation, and examining interactions among Latin American delegations, we can understand the Pan American Games as a site of grassroots diplomacy.


Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 3093-3103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annalise G. Blum ◽  
Stacey A. Archfield ◽  
Richard M. Vogel

Abstract. Daily streamflows are often represented by flow duration curves (FDCs), which illustrate the frequency with which flows are equaled or exceeded. FDCs have had broad applications across both operational and research hydrology for decades; however, modeling FDCs has proven elusive. Daily streamflow is a complex time series with flow values ranging over many orders of magnitude. The identification of a probability distribution that can approximate daily streamflow would improve understanding of the behavior of daily flows and the ability to estimate FDCs at ungaged river locations. Comparisons of modeled and empirical FDCs at nearly 400 unregulated, perennial streams illustrate that the four-parameter kappa distribution provides a very good representation of daily streamflow across the majority of physiographic regions in the conterminous United States (US). Further, for some regions of the US, the three-parameter generalized Pareto and lognormal distributions also provide a good approximation to FDCs. Similar results are found for the period of record FDCs, representing the long-term hydrologic regime at a site, and median annual FDCs, representing the behavior of flows in a typical year.


Author(s):  
Keith L. Camacho

This chapter examines the creation and contestation of Japanese commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands. As an archipelago colonized by Japan and the United States, the Mariana Islands have become a site through which war memories have developed in distinct and shared ways. With respect to Japanese commemorations, the analysis demonstrates why and how they inform and are informed by Chamorro and American remembrances of the war in the Mariana Islands. By analyzing government, media, and tourist accounts of the war from the 1960s to the present, I thus show how we can gain an understanding and appreciation for the complex ways by which Japanese of various generations reckon with a violent past.


2019 ◽  
pp. 67-96
Author(s):  
Yossi Harpaz

This chapter studies the growth in U.S. dual nationality in Mexico, and specifically the phenomenon of strategic cross-border births. This involves middle- and upper-class Mexican parents who travel to the United States to give birth, aiming to secure U.S. citizenship for their children. The families who engage in this practice typically have little interest in emigrating. Instead, they mainly view the United States as a site of high-prestige consumption and wish to provide their children with easy access to tourism, shopping, and education across the border. The American passport is also an insurance policy that allows easy exit at times of insecurity in Mexico. This strategic acquisition of U.S. dual nationality by upper-class Mexicans can be juxtaposed with another recent trend: the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican undocumented immigrants, who take their U.S.-born children with them to Mexico. For the former group, dual nationality is voluntary and practical; for the latter, it is an imposed disadvantage.


Author(s):  
Alan McPherson

This chapter surveys the late 1980s, when Armando Fernández defects to the United States, stands trial, and confirms the story told a decade earlier by Michael Townley. Emboldened by the first indictment of a Chilean military man in US courts, investigators and the families push for the Chilean courts to re-open the Letelier case, which they refuse to do. Back in the United States in 1990, the two Cuban-Americans who had been on the lam since 1979, Virgilio Paz and José Suárez, are caught, tried, and jailed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Tillotson ◽  
Jennifer A. Colanese

Recent state-level penal policy reforms have the potential to shift the burden of incarceration to local jails. We argue that such transcarceration is not a new phenomenon, but rather, is a persistent aspect of incarceration in the United States. In this article, we provide an historical analysis of jails in the Early American Republic (1790-1850), including their role expansion to include felon and misdemeanant incarceration, their role contraction alongside the development of institutions for various special populations, and their enduring function as a site of “rabble” management.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Erker ◽  
Joanna Bruso

AbstractThere is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have lived in the United States for a larger fraction of their lives, who use English more frequently, and who do so more proficiently fill pauses differently when speaking Spanish than do those who have spent less time in the contact setting and whose English skills and usage are more restricted. Results show that a greater degree of contact corresponds to increased use of centralized vowels in phonologically filled pauses (i.e., more frequent use of [a(m)] and [ə(m)] at the expense of [e(m)]). This pattern is interpreted as evidence of contact-induced change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Pruett

Lesbians and other queer women are typically absent from theorizations of boy band fandom even though boy bands often have sizable lesbian fan bases. Lesbian fandom of the British–Irish boy band One Direction congregated primarily on Tumblr; this fandom constituted a queer community space that exposed the boy band as a site of lesbian erotic and creative energy. One manifestation of lesbian One Direction fandom was the drag king performance group known as Every Direction, which maintained an active Tumblr page in addition to performing live drag king renditions of popular One Direction songs. Interviews with the group's members, along with a content analysis of lesbian Tumblr fandom of One Direction, illuminate the significant creative output of this understudied fan community. This phenomenon is placed into conversation with the lesbian feminist–affiliated Women's Music Movement of the 1970s, which had a lasting impact on popular conceptions of lesbian musical preferences in the United States. I argue that lesbian One Direction fandom constitutes a contemporary queer political intervention that reworks lesbian feminist political tactics and priorities. This data acts as a record of the lesbian One Direction fan community that congregated on Tumblr during the band's heyday, as well as an intervention in scholarly theorizations of lesbian fans and fan practices.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document