When   Thursday, November 19, 2009   Time   5:00 PM - 6:30 PM  
Where   Kresge/crowe Hall 2-301 1860-80 Campus Dr   map it
Audience   - Faculty/Staff - Student - Public
Contact   Lucille Kerr   847/491-8249  
Group   Department of Spanish and Portuguese

 Ruth Behar is Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at The University of Michigan, and a 1988 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”  A Jewish Cuban-American film maker and poet as well as an anthropologist, she has a wide range of interests and accomplishments, both academic and artistic.  Her pioneering research as a cultural anthropologist has taken her from Mexico to Spain and, now, to Cuba, where, for the last decade, she has focused on the island’s Jewish community since the 1959 Revolution. Her numerous publications include Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story (1993), Everything I Kept: Poems in Prose/Todo lo que guardé: Poemas en prosa (2001), and An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba (2007).  Her 2001 documentary film Adio Kerida focuses on the search for identity, history, and memory among Sephardic Jews with roots in Cuba. Currently, she is working on a project about Cuban Jews, referred to as "Jubans," who remade their home in Miami, transforming themselves while also helping to transform the city into a global Latino capital.