Bio

I was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in New York City. I have been a professor of Hispanic studies at Carnegie Mellon University since August 1993. My Ph.D. is from the University of California, Berkeley; my research interests include Cuban, U.S. Latino and Latin American Jewish and Sephardic literary and cultural studies. I am currently completing Cuban to the Core: How Performance, Politics, and Place-Making Shaped the Future of Cuba in South Florida, 1886-1960. My books include Spanish and Empire, En otra voz: Antología de la literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos and Herencia: The Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature in the United States. Among my most recent articles are “Latin Place Making in the Late 19th & Early 20th Centuries: Cuban Émigrés and their Transnational Impact in Tampa, FL”; and “Tablas sin fronteras: ‘leyendo a Cuba’ en el teatro cubano de Tampa en los 1920” and “Language & the Promised Land: Passage & Migration to a 'Third Place.”

In Pittsburgh, in addition to being a faculty member at CMU, I am currently the executive director of Coro Latinoamericano and its CORITO children’s choir, co-president of the Latin American Cultural Union, and a writer and co-anchor for the Spanish-language, community affairs radio program Barrio Latino in Pittsburgh. I also served for two years on the Development Committee of the Casa San Jose’s Board of Directors and co-founded a Hispanic children’s outreach program CIRCULO, with two CMU colleagues, in 2007.

Department Member Since 1993