The University of Florida Press announces a new book series, “Caribbean Crossroads: Race, Identity, and Freedom Struggles,” edited by Caribbean studies scholars Lillian Guerra, Devyn Spence Benson, April Mayes, and Solsiree del Moral.
More than any other region of the Americas, the Caribbean has been continuously defined by the push and pull between global white supremacy and Black liberation, colonial and anticolonial impulses, and the struggle for freedom against externally imposed economies and political systems. This new series will focus on these varied and contradictory histories of the region with a particular focus on Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and their transnational ties.
The series editors will highlight scholarship that explores the Caribbean as a racialized space and that identifies the ways whiteness and Blackness work in the region. The series is dedicated to publishing projects based on fieldwork in Caribbean libraries, archives, homes, and streets that reflect local experiences and viewpoints. Accordingly, the editors welcome book proposals about Caribbean history, broadly defined, which may include some literature and anthropology.
Lillian Guerra is professor of history at the University of Florida and the author of several books, including Heroes, Martyrs, and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba, 1946‒1958 and Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption and Resistance, 1959‒1971. Guerra’s work on Cuban and Caribbean history has been supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. Contact: lillian.guerra@ufl.edu
Devyn Spence Benson is associate professor of history and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky and the author of Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution. Benson’s research focuses on antiracist movements in the twentieth century, specifically concerning Afro-Cuban history, politics, and culture. Benson has held residencies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, and her current work is being supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Contact: devyn.benson@uky.edu
April Mayes is professor of history at Pomona college, the author of The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity, and coeditor of Transnational Hispaniola: New Directions in Haitian and Dominican Studies. Mayes’ research on the Dominican Republic and Haiti has been funded by a Rockefeller Foundation Grant and a Fulbright Research-Teaching Fellowship. Mayes is a cofounder of the Transnational Hispaniola collective, which promotes research and cross-national dialogue on the island. Contact: april.mayes@pomona.edu
Solsiree del Moral is professor of American studies and Black studies and chair of the American Studies Department at Amherst College. Del Moral is the author of Negotiating Empire: The Cultural Politics of Schools in Puerto Rico, 1898‒1952. Del Moral’s research, which focuses on Puerto Rico, the circum-Caribbean, and U.S. colonialism, has received support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship. Contact: sdelmoral@amherst.edu
Scholars interested in publishing in the series can send queries to any of the individual series editors. They can also contact Press editor-in-chief Stephanye Hunter at sah@upress.ufl.edu.
The Florida Bookshelf 