Cuban Intersections of Literary and Urban Spaces

Cuban Intersections of Literary and Urban Spaces examines Havana as a center where urban and literary spaces often come together. The idea for this collection of essays grew out of an international conference on Cuba, Cuba Futures: Past and Present, held by the City University of New York's Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at CUNY's Graduate Center in 2011, but evolved out of a collaboration with scholars in the fields of literature, architecture, urban planning, and library science. The topics addressed peek at a dynamic Cuban nation through its cultural interstices at a crucial moment in the island's evolving history. This conference proceeding opens with a piece on the intersections between Havana's colonial built environment and the literary aesthetic of the Baroque in the Caribbean. The collection continues with the following areas of study: urban gardens, urban planning, architecture, literary projections on space, international relations and cultural institutions, access to books, and social policies.