The Search for a Usable Past: Reflections on Cuba’s Cultural Heritage

Authors

  • Michelle Antoinette Tisdel National Library of Norway

Abstract

In the much-anticipated Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation, author Pablo Alonso González (2018) combines material culture, cultural heritage, history, and comparative politics in an appealing and sophisticated manner. The ambitious and detailed study examines the development of heritage form and content from 1902 to 2014, analyzing how particular processes and ideologies shaped architecture, monuments, public spaces, museums, national narratives, and the performance of national identity.

Author Biography

Michelle Antoinette Tisdel, National Library of Norway

Michelle A. Tisdel is a research librarian and associate professor at the National Library of Norway. She holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from Harvard University (2006). Tisdel held positions as Associate Professor of International Studies at Oslo University College and curator at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her research interests include heritage, museums, narratives, life history, and belonging in Cuba and Norway.

References

Alonso González, Pablo. 2016. “Monumental Art and Hidden Transcripts of Resistance in Revolutionary Cuba, 1970–1990.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 25(2): 271-296.

Alonso González, Pablo. 2018. Cuban Cultural Heritage. A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary nation. Gainesville, University Press of Florida.

Bronfman, Alejandra. 2004. Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902–1940 (Envisioning Cuba). Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Hamlish, Tamara. 1995. “Preserving the Palace: Museums and the Making of Nationalism(s) in Twentieth-Century China.” Museum Anthropology 19(2): 20.

Hamlish, Tamara. 2000. “Global Culture, Modern Heritage: Re-membering the Chinese Imperial Collection”. In Museums and Memory, edited by Susan A. Crane, 137-158. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Scott, James C. 1990. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Tisdel Flikke, Michelle A. 2006. “Cuban Museums and Afro-Cuban Heritage: Fragments and Transitions in Daily Life.” Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.

Tisdel, Michelle A. 2008. "Three Interpretations of Materiality and Society: Afro-Cuban Heritage and the Cuban Slave Route Museum." In Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture, edited by Håkon Glørstad and Lotte Hedaeger, 87-125. Staviksvägen: Bricoleur Press.

Tisdel, Michelle A. 2018. “From Underworld to Museum Showcase Afro-Cuban Religions, Heritage Production and Cuban Cultural Policy” In Cultural Contestation: Heritage, Identity and the Role of Government, edited by Jeroen Rodenberg and Pieter Wagenaar, 105-137. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Watson, Rubie S. 1995. Palaces, Museums, and Squares: Chinese National Spaces. Museum Anthropology 19(2): 7-19.

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Published

2019-05-23

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2019)

Section

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