Cultural Anthropologist, Librarian, Curator, and Bead Artist
I am the Cuban Heritage Collection Librarian and Curator of Latin American Collections at the University of Miami Libraries.
My doctoral research explores Afro-Asian religious formation and material culture in Cuba. More recently, I have worked on issues and responses of healthcare needs among Afro-Cuban religious practitioners.
I hold a secondary teaching appointment in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Miami and teach classes on religion; Latin America & the Caribbean; and anthropology. I am an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School and I am interested in print cultures and the history of the book in the circum-Atlantic.
BEADWORK
Some of the beadwork I have made for the Lucumà orishas.
CHINESE CUBA
With the rapid pace of the sugar industry showing no abatement during the early years of the nineteenth century, the demand for labor in Cuba far outstripped its supply. Alongside the waning of the transatlantic slave trade, Spanish-owned plantations looked east for prospective Chinese workers, or coolies…[read more]
TEACHING
The classes that I teach and examples of student learning
EXPLORE
