Florida International University

Faculty Member, Global and Sociocultural Studies

Visiting Assistant Professor

Arts & Sciences

About

I am a cultural anthropologist with research and teaching interests that include Latin American Studies, Cuban/Cuban-American Studies, urban anthropology, anthropology of religion, anthropology of performance, folklore, gender studies, cultural productions, diasporic communities, and medical anthropology, with a focus on pluralistic healing practices.  My ethnographic fieldwork experiences include research in Miami on Santeria and Kardecian Spiritism as well as on Palo Monte, an Afro-Cuban religious/healing tradition.  I have a strong intellectual interest in the anthropology of gender, and I have done ethnographic research in Miami on gay Cubans and drag performers.  I approach the study of ethnicity through analyses of the performance of identity, and to that end I have documented political demonstrations and vigils in South Florida (including the Elian Gonzalez phenomenon), and Cuban food and restaurants as ethnic performance.  I have conducting additional ethnographic research in 2008 on practitioners of Palo Monte.  I have conducted fieldwork with an elderly practitioner who underwent initiation in Cuba and has since settled in Miami, Florida, where he continues to practice and to guide new initiates.  Initial findings indicate symbolic links between white Cuban practitioners in Miami, a romanticized Cuba, and a mythic Africa as the basis of magical power and prestige.  To my knowledge this will be the first ethnography of this esoteric and secretive religious and cultural group in North America.