Cuba: An American History
Ada Ferrer, History and Latin American & Caribbean Studies, New York University
April 18, 2022 · 12:00 pm—1:20 pm · 219 Aaron Burr Hall
Program in Latin American Studies
Join us for an in-person event with Ada Ferrer on her 2021 book Cuba: An American History, in conversation with Rachel Price.
Cuba: An American History deftly weaves Ferrer’s own family history into the vaster half-millennium of Cuban history, narrating both the island’s epic past and the lesser-known struggles of everyday people, from the beginning of Iberian colonialism in the Americas through Cuba’s histories of enslavement, anti-slavery, and revolution. Along the way Ferrer signals how Cuba’s modern history is inextricable from that of the United States. Building upon the author’s prior landmark studies Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 and Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, Cuba: An American History is a “page-turning masterpiece…rarely is good history this kind of literary performance” (David W. Blight, Yale University, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom).
ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER
Ada Ferrer, is the Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, where she has taught since 1995.
Her most recent book is Cuba: An American History (Scribner, 2021), a sweeping history of more than five hundred years of Cuban history, written in rousing and accessible prose and based on more than thirty years of travel to and research on the island. Her first book, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898, was a history of the Cuban independence movement against Spain and the central role of slavery and race in its unfolding. The book won the 2000 Berkshire Book Prize for the best first book by a woman in any field of history. Ferrer’s second book, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, explored the pivotal role of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba. It won the Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, as well as multiple prizes from the American Historical Association. Learn more.
Moderator: Rachel Price, Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton University
This lecture is being offered in-person for Princeton University ID holders only. Boxed lunches will be available. Registration is required to attend.
