Past Graduate Fellows


2023-2024 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellows

Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Katie Coldiron
Florida International University | History
Cuban Studies in Miami

Daniel Delgado
University of Southern California | History
Race and Annexation: Evaluating Cuba's Myth of Racelessness from Narciso López to the PIC Massacre

Maytte Hernández Lorenzo
University of Miami | Modern Languages and Literatures
Cultural policies and cultural citizenship: articulating new narratives in Cuban theater

Ryan Metz
Ohio State University | History
Relaxations and Revolutions: A History of Cuban Neocolonial Resistance through the Built Landscapes of Havana Tourism, 1930s-1970s

Elyse Veloria
Duke University | Cultural Anthropology
The Sweetness of Sazón: Cuban Sugar and Identity in Popular Culture

Anna Wenzel
University of Maryland | History
Cuban Exile Political Violence, 1959-1980

Research Fellows

Chasitie Brown
University of Texas at Austin | Art History
The Dormant Scar: Embodying Blackness in the Queloides Exhibition Series in Cuba, the United States, and Spain

Damian Deamici
University of Connecticut | Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Markets, Youth, and Counterculture in Argentina and Cuba (1961-1969)

Lidia Hernández
The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) | Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILAC)
Negotiating “Cuban Color:” Cultural Citizenship, Networks and Technologies of Cuban Visual Arts And Literature in New York City During 1930s and 1940s

Lisa Krause
University of Florida | History
Between Solidarity and Surveillance: Cuban-East German Transnational Relations, ca. 1959 – 1990

Xu Peng
University of Connecticut | Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies
From History to the Future: Chineseness in Contemporary Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican Literatures and Cultures

Miriam Pensack
New York University | History
Registers of Sovereignty: The Struggle for State and Self in Cold War Latin America

2022-2023 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellows

Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Helio Alves
University of Florida | History
¿La Revolución Marcha Bien? Finding the reality in Cuba’s official truths narrative, 1970s-1990s

Deborah de la Torre
Indiana University, Bloomington | Department of Floklore and Ethnomusicology
Mujeres, Movimiento y Música: memories within the Cuban heritage Collection

Reynaldo Lastre
University of Connecticut | Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Nuclear Technology and Cultural Production in Cuba

Arisbel López Andraca
University of Texas at Austin | Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Cuban religions of African antecedents and recent religious revival process (1985 to the present). Critical notes on the profusion of religious content in contemporary Cuban literature and visual arts.

Maria de L. Mariño
Temple University | Art History Department at Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Malditas/Damned: Independent curatorial practice and women curators in Cuba

Carlos Velazco
University of Virginia | Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Cubans who Tell an American Tale

Research Fellows

Richard Denis
Florida International University | History
Cuban Print Journalists and the Politics of the Press, 1940-1971

Justin Frankeny
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | Department of Music
Composing Displacement: Experiences of Cuban Art Music Composers in an Era of Uncertainty, 1959–1980

Lindsay Griffiths
Princeton University | English & African American Studies
Reciprocal Translation: Lydia Cabrera and the Unstable Text

Steven Rodríguez
Vanderbilt University | History
Imagining Hemispheric Solidarity: The United States, Cuba, and Pan-American International Education

Lauren Romaguera
Tulane University | Latin American Studies
Ruptures and Sutures: Ancestral Memory Inheritance and the Second-Generation as the Storyteller

Alexander Werner
City University of New York, Graduate Center | Anthropology
Property, Personhood, and the Avant-Garde in Havana’s ‘Post-Fidel’ Artworld

2021-2022 Award Cycle Skipped

2020-2021 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Elisa Alfonso
University of Texas at Austin | Ethno/Musicology
Re-Sounding History: Soundscapes and Traumatic Memories in Pedro Panes

Natalie Catasus
Emory University | Comparative Literature
Porous Borders, Watery Graves: Forgetting the Balseros in Cuban American Literature and Visual Culture

Richard Denis
Florida International University | History
Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: Cuban Print Media and the Politics of the Press, 1902-1969

Monica B. Ocasio Vega
University of Texas at Austin | Spanish & Portuguese
Imagining Sabor: Flavor, Race, Gender, and Sensible Life in Contemporary Cuba

Patricia Ortega-Miranda
University of Maryland, College Park | Art History & Archeology
Figures of Inscryption: The Visual Politics of Afrocuban Aesthetics

Amalia Pérez Martín
University of California, Merced | Sociology
Urgency Courts: Discursive Contentions, Revolutionary Identity, and Legal Repression in Cuba, 1952-1958

Graduate Research Fellows

Andy Alfonso
Princeton University | Spanish and Portuguese
Shadow Cadavers: Cheap Labor, Archival Praxes, and Queer Necropolitics in the Wake of the Cuban Revolution

Angelica Marquéz-Osuna
Harvard University | History of Science
Transmodern Bees in the Tropics: Honey Production and Beekeeping on the Mexico-Caribbean Frontier

Mariel Martínez-Alvarez
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | Romance Languages & Literatures
Common Acts: Disarticulating Hegemonic Power through Cuban and Cuban-American Theater and Performance

Daniel Pedreira
Florida International University | Politics and International Relations
Executive Branch Institutionalization and Personalization under Cuba’s 1940 Constitution

Elaine Penagos
Emory University | Graduate Division of Religion – Laney Graduate School
Cuban Writers and Diasporic Griots: Santería Poetics and the Transformation of the Patakis

Tara Phillips
University of California, Berkeley | Comparative Literature
Anti-imperial Aesthetics, Agriculture, and Foodways in the U.S. and Cuba, 1890s-1960s

Alexander Stephens
University of Michigan | History
Excludable: Cubans, Migration, & Carceral States, 1971-1996

2019-2020 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Miranda García
University of Michigan | Anthropology
Independent Advertising in Cuba: A Lens on Economic and Social Change

Brandon Mancilla
Harvard University | History
The Construction of the "Afro-Cuban" Revolutionary Subject: The Intertwined Histories of Afro-Cuban Politics and Anthropology, 1940-1970

Fernando Norat
Brown University | History
Cuban-Soviet Relations

David Roldán Eugenio
Rutgers University | Spanish & Portuguese
New Rhythms in the Streets of Havana: Spanish Gypsy Immigrants, between Minority and Elite Cubans

Carmen Pérez Torre
University of Pennsylvania | Hispanic and Portuguese Studies/Romance Languages
Counterhegemonic Mestizaje on a Changing Island: Punk Culture in Cuba

Graduate Research Fellows

Alyson Cluck
University of Maryland | Art History & Archaeology
Forms of Encounter: Zilia Sánchez’s "Topologías Eróticas" in 1960s New York

John Ermer
Florida International University | History
The Cuban Mahjar: Citizenship, Identity, and Lebanese and Syrian Migration to Cuba, 1880-1970

Lilianne Lugo Herrera
University of Miami | Modern Languages & Literatures
Mediated Archipelagoes: Theater, Women, and Media

Juan Esteban Plaza
Stanford University | Iberian & Latin American Cultures
The Riddles of Perspective: Secrecy Systems and Alternative Communities in Latin American Ethnography, novel, and film

Yairamaren Román Maldonado
University of California Berkeley | Spanish & Portuguese/Berkeley Center for New Media
Caribbean Imaginations in Twenty First Century Avant-Gardes

2018-2019 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Charles Grand
University of Texas at Arlington (History)
Combined and Uneven Investment: U.S. Capital and the Economic Development of Cuba

Cary Peñate
University of Texas at Austin (Musicology)
Rum, Tobacco, Dance, and Music: The Mulata as Signifier in Twentieth-Century Cuban Film

Justo Planas Cabreja
City University of New York, (Latin American, Iberian, & Latino Cultures)
Modernist literature and Latin American medicine: between strange forces and sick people (The case of Cuba)

Roseli Rojo Posada
Rutgers University (Spanish)
Resistances in the Cuban lettered city: excluded group’s interaction with the colonial city

Graduate Research Fellows

Laura Almeida
Pennsylvania State University (Art History)
Resisting Memory: Anti-Imperialist Tactics of Forgetting in Latin American Contemporary Art

Ingrid Brioso Rieumont
Princeton University (Spanish and Portuguese)
On the Other Side of the End—Imagining Cuba’s and Brazil’s Afterwards

Jorge Felipe González
Michigan State University (History)
Foundation and Growth of the Cuban Slave Trade, 1790-1840

Melissa Hampton
University of Minnesota (History)
The Gendered Politics of Refugee Resettlement in the Cuban Mariel Migration of 1980

Brianna Nofil
Columbia University (History)
Detention Power: Jails, Camps, and the Construction of Immigrant Incarceration

Carina Schorske
Columbia University (English & Comparative Literature)
Scattered Bodies, Fugitive Forms: American Women Artists in the Caribbean

Alberto Sosa Cabanas
Florida International University (Modern Languages)
Racism, Celebration and Otherness: Depictions of Blackness in the Cuban Cultural Discourse

2017-2018 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

John Ermer
Florida International University (History)
The Lebanese Mahjar in Cuba

Lilianne Lugo Herrera
University of Miami (Modern Languages and Literatures)
Transnational Black Bodies: Caribbean Perspectives on the Theater of the Cuban Diaspora

Rodrigo del Río
Harvard University (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Cuban Urban Imaginaries: Writing the City on the Verge of Revolution

Asiel Sepúlveda
Southern Methodist University (Art History)
City Impressions: Frédéric Mialhe and the Making of Nineteenth-Century Havana

Alberto Sosa Cabanas
Florida International University (Modern Languages)
Racism, Celebration and Otherness: Depictions of Blackness in the Cuban Cultural Discourse (1790- 1959)

Graduate Research Fellows

Elizabeth Cerejido
University of Florida (Art and Art History)
Cuban (American) Art: Beyond Nation and Diaspora

William Kelly
Rutgers University (History)
Revolución es [Re]construir: Housing Policy and Everyday Life in the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1989

Sara Kozameh
New York University (History)
Harvest of Revolution: Cuban Agrarian Reform and the Politics of Consent, 1958-1970

Catherine Mas
Yale University (History, Program in the History of Science and Medicine)
The Culture Brokers: Medicine, Anthropology, and Transcultural Miami, 1960-1990

Corinna Moebius
Florida International University (Global and Sociocultural Studies)
Transnational Racial Politics of Public Memory and Public Space in Little Havana’s Heritage District

Rosanne Sia
University of Southern California (American Studies and Ethnicity)
Performing Fantasy in Motion: The Hemispheric Circulation of Women Performers, 1940-1960

2016-2017 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Melissa Bumbach
University of Miami (Choral Studies, Vocal Performance)
Conducting an oral history of Dr. Digna Guerra, the director of the National Choir of Cuba since 1975

Mariel Martínez-Alvarez
University of Michigan (Romance Languages)
Revisiting the Works of Gastón Baquero: The Cuban Revolution Through the Lens of a Fascist Intellectual

Vida Owusu-Boateng
Louisiana State University (Comparative Literature)
The Reception of Greek Tragedy in Africa and Cuba

Rachel Pérez
Yale University (American Studies)
Healing and religious practices among Cubans on the island and in the diaspora in the 20th and 21st centuries

James Wilkey
Louisiana State University (Latin American History)
Beyond an Island: Diaspora, Dispersal and Cuban Identity

Graduate Research Fellows

Samuel Finesurrey
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
The Paradoxes of Intimacy: An American Colony in Revolutionary Cuba (1952-1962)

Ernesto Fundora
University of Miami (Modern Languages and Literatures)
Beyond the Shadowed Forest: Canon Formation Processes in Cuban Theater

Richard Mwakasege-Minaya
University of Michigan (Screen Arts & Cultures)
Cuban Exiles Media Activism & Cold War Politics

José Villar
Florida International University (Modern Languages)
New Men, New Nations, New Selves: Queer Subjects Between Assimilation and Practices of Freedom in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production

2015-2016 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Daniel Fernández
University of Florida (History)
Transnational contributions to Cuban state formation: The Spanish Republican Exiles in Cuba

William Kelly
Rutgers University (History)
Constancy and Change: An Analysis of Revolutionary-Era Urban Housing Policy in Cuba

Sara Kozameh
New York University (History)
The Agrarian Reforms in Revolutionary Cuba: 1959-1965

Richard Mwakasege-Minaya
University of Michigan (Screen Arts & Cultures)
Disseminating Greater Cuba: Cuban Exiles & Cuban-American Media Production

José Villar
Florida International University (Modern Languages)
New Men, New Nations, New Selves: Queer Subjects Between Assimilation and Practices of Freedom in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production

Graduate Research Fellows

Francisca Aguilo Mora
University of Miami (Modern Languages and Literature)
Language Crossing and Multiaccentuality in Women Writers del Gran Caribe: Narrative, Drama and Performance

Elise Arnold-Levene
Columbia University (Latin American and Iberian Cultures)
Lydia Cabrera, the Storyteller as Collector

Gillian Beach
West Virginia University (Political Science)
Diffusion or Dissent: Examining International Advocacy Efforts and Domestic Policy Divergence

Antonio Cardentey Levin
University of Florida (Spanish and Portuguese Studies)
Crítica de la pasión caribeña. La dialéctica de los afectos en la novela histórica del Caribe insular hispano

Anasa Hicks
New York University (History)
Servants, not Workers: Domestic Labor in Cuba, 1902-1975

Dana Linda
University of California, Los Angeles (Comparative Literature)
Urban Landscapes: gender and the global cartographies of Caribbean literary cities

Rebecca Salois
City University of New York (Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages)
Choteo Cubano: Humor as a Critical Tool in 20th Century Cuban Theater

2014-2015 Cuban Heritage Collection Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Francisca Aguilo Mora
University of Miami (Modern Languages and Literature)
Multilingual Voices in el Gran Caribe: The Inscription of a New Language That Talks a New Usanocaribeña Spatiality

Fernanda Bretones Lane
Vanderbuilt University (History)
Cuba and the Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions

Sarah Becker
University of Houston (Hispanic Studies)
Yemayá and Ochún, or the Literary Tradition of the Feminine Orishas: The Feminist-Queer Ethnography of Lydia Cabrera

Kaitlyn Henderson
Tulane University (History)
The Gospel of José Martí: Cuban Racial Discourse in the Twentieth Century

Oscar Amaya Ortega
Georgetown University (Spanish and Portuguese)
Interdisciplinary Dialogue in Lydia Cabrera and Wifredo Lam’s Afro-Cuban Collaborations

Graduate Research Fellows

Alexander Eastman
Washington University in St. Louis (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Binding Freedom: Cuba’s Black Public Sphere, 1868-1912

Zeila Frade
Florida International University (Modern Languages)
Children’s Literature, Ideology and Cultural Identity Before and After the Cuban Revolution

Ann Halbert-Brooks
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
Teaching the Revolution: Growing the Cuban Culture of Education, 1959

Joseph Hartman
Southern Methodist University (Art History)
The Rocks and Marbles Speak: Spatial Cultures of Republican Cuba

Eric Mayer-García
Louisiana State University (Theatre)
Cuban Avant-Garde Theatre in the United States: 1978-1991

Jeanine Navarrete
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
“See it like a native”: Race and the Politics of Latino Immigration to Miami, 1965-1980

2013-2014 Cuban Heritage Collection Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Alexis Baldacci
University of Florida (History)
The Haves and Have-Nots: Material Culture in Revolutionary Cuba and the Cuban Diaspora, 1959-1980

Walfrido Dorta Sánchez
City University of New York (Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literature & Language)
Intellectual and Cultural Politics in Cuba and Cuban Exile in United States (1960-2000): the Map of the Cultural Journals

Maikel Fariñas Borrego
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
Regional Pressure Groups in Cuba: Rotary Clubs, Local Elites, and Conflicting Interests, 1916-1968

Cary García Yero
University of Pittsburgh (History)
Masculinities and Musical Culture in Havana 1940-1970

Eric Herschtal
Columbia University (History)
Black Communication Networks between the early American republic and Cuba (1775-1833)

Anasa Hicks
New York University (History)
Domestic work in 20th century Cuba

Eric Mayer-García
Louisiana State University (Theatre)
Translocating Theatrical and Cuban Imaginaries: Virgilio Piñera's Electra Garrigó in Miami, 1978

Kevin Sedeño-Guillen
University of Kentucky (Hispanic Studies)
The Colonial Modernity of the Spanish American literary criticism of the second half of the 18th century

Graduate Research Fellows

Hideaki Kami
Ohio State University (History)
Diplomacy and Migration: A Transformation of U.S. Relations with Cuba, 1974-1992

Elizabeth Schwall
Columbia University (History)
Embodied Communiqués and the Politics of Revolutionary Culture in Cuba, 1959 - 1989

Kelly Urban
University of Pittsburgh (History)
For the Poor Sick Ones and for Cuba: Tuberculosis and Nationalism in Cuba, 1902-1959

Francis Watlington
University of Texas at Austin (Spanish & Portuguese)
Risueños febriles: Dehumanization, Embodiment, and Ethics in the Subject of Cuban Existentialist Poetics

Gabriela Zaviezo
University of Miami (Modern Languages & Literatures)
Visual and discursive representations of gender during the past 30 years in Cuba

2012-2013 Cuban Heritage Collection Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Russell J. Boutelle
Vanderbilt University (English)
The Invention of Juan Placido and the Transamerican Antislavery Movement

Jesse Horst
University of Pittsburgh (History)
Housing and Slums in Havana 1930-1960

Natasha Pérez
Michigan State University (Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education - College of Education)
Language, Literacy, Identity and Culture in the Cuban Diaspora

Graduate Research Fellows

Michael Bustamante
Yale University (History)
Collective Memory Struggles in Revolution, Exile, and Diaspora

Mauricio Castro
Purdue University (History)
Post-1959 Miami and the American Welfare State

Joanna Elrick
Vanderbilt University (Hispanic Languages and Literatures)
Mariel and Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana: Cuban Literary Exile of the Last Three Decades

Marysol Quevedo
Indiana University (Musicology)
Negotiating Cubanness through Art Music: Composers in Socialist Cuba, 1959-1989

Lara Stein Pardo
University of Michigan (Anthropology)
Artists, Aesthetics, and Migrations: Caribbean Women Artists in Miami, Florida and the Aesthetics and Politics of Cultural Production

Martin Tsang
Florida International University (Anthropology)
Con la mocha al cuello: Chinese influence in Afro-Cuban Religion

2011-2012 Cuban Heritage Collection Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Sitela Alvarez
Tulane University (History)
The Religious and Nationalist Transformation of Cuba, 1790-1860

Michael Bustamante
Yale University (History)
Cuban Counterpoints: Memory Dialogues Across the Florida Straits, 1959-2009

Kelly Urban
University of Pittsburgh (History)
Tuberculosis in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba: A Social History

Graduate Research Fellows

Daylet Domínguez
Princeton University (Spanish)
Etnografía, narración y proyectos nacionales en el Caribe insular hispánico, 1820-1920

Joao Goncalves
University of Chicago (Anthropology)
Marti versus Marti: Nationalism and Political Symbolism in Havana and Miami

Joseph Holbrook
Florida International University (History)
Catholic Student Movements in Brazil and Cuba, 1946 to 1966

Rachel Hynson
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
Sexing the Cuban Revolution: Gender Difference and Sexuality as Tools of Nation-Making, 1959-1975

Jennifer Lambe
Yale University (History)
Baptism by Fire: The Making and Remaking of Madness in Cuba, 1899-1980

Bonnie Lucero
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
Race, Nation, and Empire in Cuba: Race Relations amidst Imperial Transition, 1895-1906

Kristina Shull
University of California, Irvine (History)
Nobody Wants These People: Reagan’s Immigration Crisis and America’s First Private Prisons

2010-2011 Cuban Heritage Collection Graduate Fellowships

Graduate Pre-Prospectus Fellows

Bonnie Lucero
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
Post-colonial Peculiarities: Cultural Reflections of Race and Gender on the Road to Cuban Independence

Martin Tsang
Florida International University (Global & Sociocultural Studies)
Afro-Chinese Identity and Religion in Cuba

Katerina Seligman
Brown University (Comparative Literature)
Caribbean Intellectual Voyages: Traveling Texts, Traveling Ideas, and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

Graduate Research Fellows

Sharada Balachandran-Orihuela
University of California, Davis (English)
Hemispheric Routes, Marginalized Economies, and Liberal Rights

Anita Casavantes-Bradford
University of California, San Diego (History)
The Politics of Childhood in Miami and Havana, 1959-1962

Jorge Castillo
University of Connecticut (Modern & Classical Languages)
Limits of Transient Sexualities: Globalization and (Trans)Caribbean Queer Subjectivities

Stephen Chambers
Brown University (History)
The American State of Cuba: The Business of Cuba and the Monroe Doctrine

Raúl Galván
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (History)
Cuban Transnationalism in the Late 19th Century: Citizenship, Sugar and Revolution

Clarisa Mondejar
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (History)
Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Daily Life in Havana, 1895-1898

Susanna Rodríguez Drissi
University of California, Los Angeles (Comparative Literature)
The Secret Life of Ruins: Exile and Melancholy in Cuban and Algerian Literatures