Caribbean Studies Network Talk

We were delighted to welcome Professor Sarah Quesada (Duke University) to deliver a thought-provoking talk to the Caribbean Studies Network. Using the poetry of Víctor Hernández Cruz, she deconstructed common notions of self identity and belonging, showing that spatial-temporal links can transcend borders and time. Through his travels in the Mediterranean and North Africa, Cruz embraces more distant histories and geographies, celebrating the fusion of cultures and unity in diversity whilst rejecting the flattening of identity. 

Professor Quesada is the author of The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge UP, December 2022). The book received an Honorable Mention for First Book in 2023 from the Modern Languages Association (MLA). Her work has also appeared in leading journals like PMLA, Comparative Literature, Small Axe, American Quarterly, African Studies Review, among other places. Her research focuses on the Global South or South-South engagements between US Latinx, Latin American and African literatures, mainly regarding histories of slavery, internationalism and decolonization. Quesada is currently working on two different projects. The first investigates different Cold War attachments between intellectuals in Greater Mexico and Africa, while unburying influences of lesser-known feminists in the Global South. The other book project considers the effects of a Mediterranean culture of conviviality and tolerance on the works of Latinx and Latin American artists and writers. Her work has been supported by the National Humanities Center, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, among other places. She is currently the Book Review Editor for the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (CUP).

Arranged by the Caribbean Studies Network and CaribOx.