The Department of Philosophy will be conducting on-campus interviews for potential candidates for a tenure-track professor position within the Humanities program. Part of the on-campus interview process will have candidates giving a research presentation that is open to students to attend and provide feedback to the department. Please join us for the research presentation of Dr. Karina Cespedes, titled "Hunger in Havana: Sex, Food and the goddess Ochun."
Abstract:
This presentation draws from Dr. Cespedes’ current book project analyzing the role of food (in)security within contemporary sexual, cultural and religious practices in Cuba. It assesses the emergence of racialized social and sexual identities forged to service tourism, to then provide an intersectional analysis of the ways in which Cubans contending with food (in)security, engaging in sexual/affective exchanges, enduring the nation’s dependence on tourism and the commodification of Locumi religious symbols and practices, respond to these larger forces with strategies meant to ameliorate multiple forms of individual and collective hunger.
Bio:
Karina L. Cespedes obtained her B.A. in Puerto Rican & Hispanic Caribbean Studies from Rutgers University in New Jersey, and her M.A and Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on comparative U.S. women of color feminist theory, Cuban tourism, sex-work and sexual identities, as well as Cuban food (in)security and Cuban religious practice and representation. She is currently an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University where she teaches courses on race, gender, sexuality, social movements, feminist intellectual traditions, and food (in)security. Her scholarly work has been published in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture and Callaloo: A Journal of African Diasporic Arts and Letters. Dr. Cespedes has also published in edited collections including Beauty Unlimited…, and A Window into Cuban and Cuban American Studies…, Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies, as well as the anthologies Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldua’s Life and Work Transformed our Own, and Tortilleras: An Anthology of Queer Latinas and Performance.