Dear Colleagues ,
*Apologies for cross-posting*
Centre for Integrated Caribbean Research and London Latin American Anthropology Seminar Series
Thursday 26th October – Opening seminar by Mette Louise Berg, University College London. Followed by drinks.
Schooling, Mobility and Belonging in Socialist Cuba and its Diaspora
Based on an ethnographic study of transnational networks of alumni of an academically selective boarding school in Havana known as La Lenin, this paper explores the nexus between social and spatial mobilities and belonging in the context of socialist Cuba and its diaspora. La Lenin was founded on Ernesto Che Guevara’s ideal of the Hombre Nuevo or New Man, and was part of the revolutionary project of constructing an independent, modern, and socialist Cuba. Today, many alumni of La Lenin participate in transnationally extended affective webs of belonging forged through family links and friendships fostered at the school. These webs constitute not only emotionally sustaining networks, but also provide material support for those alumni who emigrate from Cuba. Through the networks, alumni embrace belonging to the school but implicitly reject Cuban nationalism, and intriguingly reproduce many of the cultural forms of nationalism and nationhood in the process. The school has thus come to represent a site of identification for a globally dispersed non-national diaspora. The paper concludes by arguing for a fuller understanding of how different kinds of mobilities are interlinked with each other and with the production of migrant subjectivities, and that scholars of migration need to embed international migration and its significance within people’s lives broadly understood, including their pre-migration experiences.
The seminar will take place at 17:30 at the Senate House (Room 246, South Block, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).
This seminar is part of the series run by the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Anthropology departments of LSE, Goldsmiths and UCL. For more information about other sessions of this term's seminar series, you can visit our blog: http://anthropologyseminarilas.blogs.sas.ac.uk<http://anthropologyseminarilas.blogs.sas.ac.uk/><http://anthropologyseminarilas.blogs.sas.ac.uk/><http://anthropologyseminarilas.blogs.sas.ac.uk/>
Best,
William
William Tantam
Postdoctoral Fellow
Centre for Integrated Caribbean Research
Institute of Latin American Studies
School of Advanced Study, University of London
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU
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