Professor Elizabeth Dore's Inaugural Lecture  Event

Voices from the Cuban Revolution

In the chair: Gerald Martin, Andrew W Mellon Professor of Modern Languages Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, author of Gabriel García Márquez: A Life

The voices of Cubans living on the island are largely absent from debates about the Cuban Revolution. The internationally renowned research project led by Elizabeth Dore redresses that silence. Cubans’ perceptions of the achievements, limitations and failures of the revolutionary process are revealed in the more than one hundred in-depth life history interviews recorded from 2004 to 2008 with women and men of different walks of life, generations, racial, sexual and religious identities, and political views. Drawing closely on the narratives, Professor Dore will explore Cubans’ understandings of their political system, especially the relationship between rulers and ruled. She will highlight the generational splits that divide Cuban society, and reflect on the dilemmas of oral history.

Elizabeth Dore is Professor of Latin American Studies. She is completing a book based on the Cuban life histories. Her recent books include Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua, and Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (co-edited with Maxine Molyneux).