Holy Cross Professor Publishes Anthology on Cuban-American Art and Literature

WORCESTER, Mass. – Isabel Alvarez-Borland, professor of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross, has co-edited a new anthology titled Cuban-American Art and Literature: Negotiating Identities. Alvarez-Borland wrote an introduction to the volume as well as an essay titled, “Figures of Identity: Ana Menéndez’s and Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Photographs.”  The book was published by SUNY Press as part of a series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture. Alvarez-Borland worked with co-editor Lynette M. F. Bosch, with whom she also published Identity, Memory, and Diaspora: Voices of Cuban-American Artists, Writers, and Philosophers (2008). Both books originated during a 2006 National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Cuban-American literature, art, and philosophy, which was co-directed by Alvarez-Borland, Bosch and Jorge Gracia.

Cuban-American Art and Literature includes contributions from 11 well-known academics who are engaged in diverse scholarship and write from a variety of perspectives, ranging from overviews of fictional and visual works of art to close readings of individual texts.  Through the lens of each particular author, the groundbreaking collection seeks to investigate the issues of identity and biculturalism which are important not only to Cuban-Americans, but to any and all immigrant groups.

A member of the Holy Cross faculty for 27 years, Alvarez-Borland earned her B.A. at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, her M.A. at Middlebury College, and her Ph.D. at Penn State University. She teaches courses in both English and Spanish, with a special interest in Latin American and Cuban American literatures. She has served in several capacities for professional societies in her field, and on many committees at Holy Cross.  Additionally, she has coordinated the Spanish section of the department of Modern Languages and Literatures and directed the Latin American Studies concentration.  Last November, she was awarded the Monsignor Edward G. Murray Professorship in the Arts and Humanities, a three-year appointment which will assume in July.

Alvarez-Borland has written two critically acclaimed books, Cuban-American Narratives of Exile: From Person to Persona (1998) and Discontinuidad y ruptura en Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1983).  She is currently writing a forthcoming book on images of migration in Cuban exilic art.