Moros y Cubanos: Martí, North Africa, and Cuban Internationalism

The South-South Forum presents the lecture, "Moros y Cubanos: Martí, North Africa, and Cuban Internationalism", a work-in-progress by Prof. Christina Civantos on Thursday, October 6th, 2022, from 12:15 pm to 2:15 pm.

The classic Cuban dish of white rice mixed with black beans known to this day as "moros y cristianos" is a culinary manifestation of how the complex Spanish relationship with the Moor lingers in Cuba and troubles expressions of South-South solidarity. This examination of the relationship between moros y cubanos in the work of the renowned Cuban poet and independence movement leader José Martí (1853-1895), as well as Martí and North Africa's role within the post-1959 Cuban policy of internationalism, sheds light on the persistence of Orientalism in Cuban internationalism and the triumphs and pitfalls of South-South solidarity.

Christina Civantos is a professor of Hispanic and Arabic literary and cultural studies at the University of Miami. Her research focuses on Arabic-speaking immigrants in Hispano-America and Spain, South-South relations between Latin America and the Arab world, empire and coloniality, nationalisms, memory studies, and tolerance. She is the author of Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity (2006), The Afterlife of al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia in Contemporary Arab and Hispanic Narratives (2017), and Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía (2022), as well as numerous essays.

To sign up for the workshop and receive the paper draft, please email: eman.s.morsi@dartmouth.edu.