Programs & Events

Welcome to the Events Page for the Spanish and Latin American Studies Programs!

Spring 2016: On April 6th, Professor Iraida Lopez presented her new book Impossible Returns: Narratives of the Cuban Diaspora, followed by a Q&A. In this one-of-a-kind volume, Iraida López explores various narratives of return by those who left Cuba as children or adolescents.  Including memoirs, semi-autobiographical fiction, and visual arts, many of these accounts feature a physical arrival on the island while others depict a metaphorical or vicarious experience by means of fictional characters or childhood reminiscences. As two-way migration increases in the post-Cold War period, many of these narratives put to the test the boundaries of national identity. Professor Lopez also presented her book at The New School in New York City on Wednesday, April 20th.

Spring 2016: On Thursday March 31st, the film “EL Super” was screened and discussed with playwright, filmaker, and Latin jazz concert and record producer Iván Acosta. A classic of the cinema and theater of the Cuban diaspora, “El Super” humorously chronicles the life of a Cuban family in New York City where the title character struggles to survive and get ahead in exile. The original play was written and directed by Acosta in 1977.

Spring 2016: On the Monday following Spring Break, Schomburg Distinguished Visiting Scholar/Artist Roman Díaz, a master of Afro-Cuban traditional music, presented along with his group a demonstration of conga drumming for rumba dance and the batá drumming of the Santería religion, in Friends Hall.  Díaz then spoke with students and Professor Iraida López about his life and work.  The event was free and open to the College community.  Funded by the Schomburg Program, the events were a collaboration of the programs in Music (CA), Communication Arts (CA), Spanish Language (HGS), and Latino/a and Latin American Studies (HGS) to celebrate the Year of Latin America at Ramapo College.

Spring 2016: On Thursday, February 25th Professor Natalia Santamaria-Laorden presented and discussed the film Even the Rain as part of the HGS Film Series. In the 2010 film directed by Iciar Bollan, Bolivian film extras launch a protest against the privatization of their water supply, which parallels the Spanish conquest and exploitation of the New World.

Fall 2015: On Wednesday December 9th, Professor Natalia Santamaria-Laorden presented her book proposal entitled “Transatlantic Visions of the Spanish Fin-de-siècle Regeneration Movement” as part of the Fall 2015 HGS Colloquium series. Professor Santamaria-Laorden completed her book proposal during her sabbatical last Spring, while she was a scholar-in-residence in NYU. The book proposal was presented and accepted by a well know publishing house during the celebration of the “Transatlantic Conference” at Brown University. A Q&A followed the presentation.

Fall 2015: Cuban writer, María Elena Llana, will present in the Hispanic Caribbean Literature class on Monday, October 26^th.

A journalist, foreign correspondent, short story writer and poet, María Elena Llana began her career in writing with the beginning of the Cuban Revolution and continues to produce today.  Llana published her first collection of short stories in 1965.  She continued writing during the seventies, but more for herself rather than for publication, as the state favored socialist realist literature over the magical or fantastic during those years.

Llana’s work includes the collections Casas del Vedado (1983, Premio de lat Crítica), Castillos de naipes (1999), Ronda en el malecón and Apenas murmullos (2005), and En el limbo (2009). All of Llana’s most critically successful stories have women protagonists at the center of the convergence of narrative times within a limited space—an address in Havana—offering an interesting portrait of the construction of female subjectivity throughout the last fifty years.

Spring 2014: Selected episodes from the sereies, Dictator on the Dock: Genocide on Trial in Guatemala, were shown. The series brings viewers into the courtroom as former dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt stands trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Spring 2014: One of our Spanish Language Studies profoessors, Iraida Lopez, gave a though provoking presentation entitled “Ruptured Memories: Revisiting a Cuban Childhood” to students and faculty.

Spring 2014: Professor Sanford discussed the successes and failures of transitional justice in Latin America. Drawing on her  vast experience working on domestic and international human rights cases over the past two decades, she considers the shortcomings, failures, and successful prosecutions in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Guatemala.

Spring 2014: Professor Iraida Lopez traveled with students to theTeatro Repertorio Español to watch a play entitled  In the Time of the Butterflies (DR). Before going to the theater, attendees went to a Mexican restaurant to have lunch together.

 Fall 2013: The HGS  Film Series hosted a showing of Sleep Dealer, directed by Alex Rivera. This futuristic film depicts a haunting militarized world in which a global digital network joins minds and experiences. An exciting discussion lead by Professor Paula Straile-Costa followed the screening.

 Fall 2013: Alex Rivera, a thought provoking filmmaker renown for his political satire pieces, narratives, and documentaries, came to present at Ramapo College in November. Hos fascinating and informative presentation was called “Engineering the Border, Imagining America.”

Click Here for a Spring 2014 Events flier!