Education

Ph.D., Romance Languages, University of Miami, 2007.

M.Phil., Latin American Literature, University of Havana, 1995.

Bio

María Isabel Alfonso is an associate professor of Spanish. Her research focusses on the interceptions between aesthetics and politics in Cuba and the Caribbean. Her book, Ediciones El Puente y los vacíos del canon literario cubano: dinámicas culturales posrevolucionarias (Editorial Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico 2016) provides an inside look into Cuba's cultural and political dynamics in the context of the sixties.

Professor Alfonso teaches general courses on Latin America and Spain literature, culture and film, as well as intermediate and advanced language classes. Her specialty courses include: Cuban Revolution: The Reinvention of a Dream; Cuba and Nicaragua; The Making and Unmaking of Revolutions; and Deconstructing the Caribbean.

Dr. Alfonso serves on the college's Diversity Committee, the Council for the Arts and the E-Learning subcommittee.

A proud member founder of CAFE (Cuban Americans for Engagement), an organization that has played an important role in the reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba relations, Alfonso is currently finalizing the documentary Rethinking Cuban Civil society, a film that address issues of contemporary Cuba, frequently neglected and unreported by mainstream media.

Select Publications

“Ediciones El Puente y los vacíos del canon: hacia una nueva poética del compromiso.” En: Ediciones El Puente en la Habana de los años 60. Lecturas críticas y libros de poesía. Jesús J. Barquet, ed. Chihuahua: Ediciones del Azar, 2011.

“Radical Poetics of the Sixties in Cuba: The Case of Ediciones El Puente and Its Revolutionary Existentialism.” Public 52: Havana (Fall 2015): 203-216.

Quote

"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."

"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures.”

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote