Workshop in Havana Lays Groundwork for Master's Degree with Emphasis in Caribbean Studies

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo is working with the University of Havana on a collaborative effort through which students will be able to obtain from UB an interdisciplinary Master of Arts in humanities degree with a specialty in Caribbean studies.

A delegation of UB faculty members traveled to Cuba last month for a six-day workshop to facilitate the effort, which is scheduled to begin in the fall, pending final approval.

The project has generated considerable excitement among faculty members at both schools because the curriculum raises complex and intriguing questions about the very nature of the Caribbean "space" in geography, history, language, myth and memory.

Charles Stinger, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences who led the delegation, called the workshop "a remarkable intellectual and cultural event" that resulted in "fruitful discussions between UB faculty and their University of Havana counterparts."

"As a result of the week's activity," he added, "UB faculty have made important contacts with UH faculty and established the basis for furthering the educational and research goals" of the joint effort.

Setting the stage for effective collaboration between faculty members who will teach in the program and possibly conduct future research together was, in fact, the intended goal of the workshop, said Jose Buscaglia, assistant professor of modern languages and literatures and director of Cuban and Caribbean Programs at UB.

"Perhaps more importantly," Buscaglia added, "we wanted to take this opportunity to begin a conversation with our Cuban counterparts about the broad trans-disciplinary, innovative and integrative vision of the Caribbean that we espouse and are promoting through our partnership with the University of Havana."

Noting the inadequacy of existing models and the lack of resources for the study of the region, Buscaglia said the organizers of the workshop in both Buffalo and Havana want to identify problem areas and design knowledge-based strategies that promote a better understanding of Caribbean societies and cultures.

That vision, he said, is a study of the Caribbean region on its own terms that will offer students a direct experience of the complex cultural, intellectual and artistic milieus of the region and of its Diaspora.

In pursuit of that end, students in the two-year program will have the opportunity to spend two semesters studying and living in the Caribbean, beginning with a first semester of studies in Havana, and engage in on-site investigations and immediate participation in the processes that shape everyday life in the region. Credits for coursework at UH will be transferable to UB.

Stinger noted that in addition to the discussions, the recent visit to Havana featured cultural events that "gave us additional perspective on Cuban culture." These included the opening of an exhibition of paintings by noted contemporary Cuban Elio Rodríguez and a visit to the artist's studio and home.

He said there also was a "stunning" dance performance at the Superior Institute of Art by students in costume who performed Afro-Cuban dances, he said. The noted early music group Ars Longa performed a concert of Italian Renaissance music in a restored colonial-era church in Old Havana, and, during the closing lunch, held at the Capitolio, the trio Nueva Tradición performed traditional popular Cuban music "with such elan that everyone from UB and UH spontaneously joined in dancing, an unforgettable conclusion to a workshop that involved all the senses," Stinger said.

Participants in "The Havana Workshop" will issue a trilingual (English-French-Spanish) report, Buscaglia said. The report, he added, is expected to suggest new techniques and questions to help guide studies at the master's level, stimulate discussion on the nature and scope of "Caribbean space" as an object of study, and serve as a reference for a second workshop to be held within a year in another point of the Caribbean or its Diaspora.

In addition to Stinger and Buscaglia, UB participants in the workshop were: Galen Brokaw, assistant professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures; Tatiana de la Tierra, visiting assistant librarian, University Libraries; Alexis DeVeaux, associate professor, Department of Women Studies, and William Egginton, assistant professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.

Also, María Elena Gutierrez, associate professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures; Shaun Irlam, associate professor and interim chair, Department of Comparative Literature; David Johnson, assistant professor, Department of Comparative Literature; Christian Onikepe, assistant professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures; Henry Taylor, professor, Department of Planning; Margarita Vargas, associate professor, Department of

Modern Languages and Literatures, and Margo Willbern, director of Interdisciplinary Graduate Degree Programs.

Buffalo has a large, principally Puerto Rican, Caribbean population.

UB, which has as a history of being a pioneering institution committed to the study of the Caribbean and the Americas, established the first graduate program of Puerto Rican Studies in the U.S. in 1967. It recently launched the Center of the Americas, a broad and interdisciplinary initiative for hemispheric studies.

In 1997, UB and UH initiated one of the first summer exchange programs between universities in the U.S. and Cuba that at the time was one of the few permitted by the U.S. Treasury Department. Two years later, Fernando Remirez de Estenoz Barciela, then the first deputy minister of Cuba and chief of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, came to UB to address Cuban-American relations and the possibility of joint academic programs between UB and UH.