Ada Ferrer

Present Employment

Assistant Professor, Latin American and Caribbean History, Department of History, New York University, January 1995-present

Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan, History, May 1995
M.A., University of Texas at Austin, History, August 1988
B.A., Vassar College, English, May 1984

Awards and Fellowships

Lewis Hanke Prize, Conference on Latin American History, 1997
American Philosophical Society, Travel Grant, 1997
NEH Scholar in Residence, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, 1996-1997
Berkshire Fellowship, Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, Summer 1996 (declined)
Poder Latino, New York University, Distinguished Service Award, 1995
Honorable Mention, Distinguished Dissertation Prize, University of Michigan, 1996
Fulbright/U.S. Dept. of Education, Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, Spain, 1992-1993
Social Science Research Council, Doctoral Research Fellowship, Cuba, 1992-1993
Mellon Candidacy Fellowship, University of Michigan, 1992
Johns Hopkins University, SAIS, Cuban Studies Program, Fellowship for Study in Cuba, 1992
Rackham Merit Fellowship, University of Michigan, 1991, 1993-1995
University Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin, 1986-1987
Hotel, Bar, and Restaurant Workers’ Union, Local 6, Scholarship, 1980-1984

Publications

Book:

Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming, 1999).

Articles in Journals and Books:

"Cuba, 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Empire," Radical History Review, January 1999.

"Rustic Men, Civilized Nation: Race, Culture and Contention on the Eve of Cuban Independence," forthcoming in Hispanic American Historical Review, November 1998.

"The Silence of Patriots: Racial Discourse and Cuban Nationalism, 1868-1898," in José Martí’s Our America: From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming, 1998).

"Esclavitud, ciudadanía, y los límites de la nacionalidad cubana: la guerra de los diez años, 1868-1878," Historia Social (Valencia), 22 (1995): 101-25.

"Fidel’s History, History’s Fidel: Recent Writings on Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution," Michigan Quarterly Review, 33 (Fall 1994): 892-900.

"Social Aspects of Cuban Nationalism: Race, Slavery, and the Guerra Chiquita, 1879-1880," Cuban Studies, 21 (1991): 37-56.

Co-Author with Rebecca Scott, "Introduction" to Cuban section of Societies After Slavery, 1830-1930: An Annotated Research Bibliography, edited by Rebecca Scott, Leslie Rowland, et al., (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).

Book Reviews:

Robin Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940, forthcoming in Hispanic American Historical Review.

Jay Kinsbruner, Not of Pure Blood: Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico and Kimberly Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803, in Colonial Latin American Research Review, 7 (1998): 146-48.

Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, in The Historian, 59 (1997): 873-74.

Lorna Valerie Williams, The Representation of Slavery in Cuban Fiction, in Hispanic American Historical Review, 75 (1995): 673-74

Robert Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict over Slavery in Cuba, in Ethnohistory, 39 (1992): 84-87.

Robert Levine, Cuba in the 1850s, in Hispanic American Historical Review, 71 (1991) 898.

Miscellaneous Publications:

Contributor, Societies After Slavery, 1830-1930: An Annotated Research Bibliography, edited by Rebecca Scott, Leslie Rowland, et al., (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).

Translator, Oscar Zanetti, "American History: A View from Cuba," Journal of American History, 79 (1992) 530-31.

Conference Papers and Invited Lectures

"Writing the Nation," Latin American Colloquium Series, Dickinson College, April 1, 1999. Also presented at the Conference on States, Networks, and Culture," New School University, March 5, 1999.

"Race, Empire, and the Politics of Civilization," Swarthmore College, March 4, 1999. Also presented at "Despues del 98: Identidad y Nación en España, Cuba, Puerto Rico y Filipinas," Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, November 1998.

"Rethinking 1898: Race, Nation, Empire, and the Writing of History," Tufts University, History Department Colloquium, April 14, 1998; also presented in lecture series: "Circa 1898," King Juan Carlos Center, New York University, March 2, 1998.

"Soldiers, Armies, Colonies, and Empires: Cuba 1898," Conference on Culture, Popular Participation, and the Spanish-American War, City University of New York, Graduate Center, March 27, 1998.

"Reflections on Writing about Race in Cuba from the United States," Taller de Historia, Universidad de la Habana, March 11, 1998.

"Rustic Men, Civilized Nation: Race, Culture, and Contention on the Eve of Cuban Independence," American Historical Association Meetings, Seattle, January, 1998; Taller de Historia, Archivo Provincial, Cienfuegos, Cuba, March 1998; and Seminar on Race and Ethnicity in Latin America, Department of History, University of Michigan, October, 1997.

"Cuba Between Racism and Anti-Racism," First Annual Cuban Research Institute, Florida International University, October, 1997.

"Race, War, and Nation: Cuban History in the Perspective of the Caribbean," Caribbean Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Emergence of a Field," New York University, May 1997.

"The Black Insurgent in the Prose of Independence, 1886-1895," Colloquia on Social History and Biography, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, March 6, 1997.

"Race, Region, and Gender in Rebel Cuba: Quintín Bandera and the Question of Political Leadership in Cuba," Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook, November 20, 1996; and Workshop on Race and Politics in Turn of the Century Cuba," Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, New York University, April 12, 1996.

"The Silence of Patriots: Racial and National Discourses in Cuba, 1868-1898," Our America and the Gilded Age: José Martí’s Chronicles of Imperial Critique, University of California, Irvine, January, 27-28, 1995.

"Imposters and Patriots: Race, Identity and the Cuban War of Independence, 1895-1898," Latin American Studies Association, Atlanta, March 10-12, 1994.

"The Black Insurgent and Cuban National Identity," Seminario de Historia de Cuba, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, March 25-26, 1993.

"Estudios sobre sociedades esclavistas y postesclavistas: el caso del imperio español," with Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, February 2, 1993.

"Education and Nationality: Cuban Public Schooling during U.S. Occupation," American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., December 28-30, 1992.

"Slave Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Cuba," Symposium on African Slave Revolts in the New World, Museum of African American History, Detroit, April 1991.

Selected Professional and University Service

Faculty Member, "Caribbean Summer School Program," Centre de Recherche sur les Pouvoirs Locaux dans la Caraïbe, Universite des Antilles et de la Guyane, Martinique, July 13-29, 1898

Workshop on 1898, Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies, Cuba Working Group, Washington, D.C., August 2-8, 1998

Manuscript Reviewer, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Hispanic American Historical Review, Latin American Research Review, New West Indian Guide, Cuban Studies, and Ethnohistory.

Program Committee, 11^th Annual Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, 1997-present.

Grant Reviewer, MacArthur Foundation, 1997

Advisory Board, Cuban Regional Archives Project, University of Michigan, 1997-present

Co-organizer (with Karen Kupperman and Sinclair Thomson), Atlantic History Workshop, New York University, 1998-1999

Co-organizer (with James Fernández), "Circa 1898: Colonies, Nations, Empires" Lecture Series, King Juan Carlos Center, New York University, Spring 1998

Latin American Studies Association, Task Force on Scholarly Relations with Cuba, Cuban History Working Group, 1994-1997

Adviser, "Cuban Roots, Bronx Tales," (Documentary film), 1995-1997

Mentor, Leadership Alliance Summer Program, New York University, 1997, 1998

GSAS Opportunity Fellowship Selection Committee, New York University, Spring 1998

Latin American History Search Committee, New York University, History Department, Spring 1995, 1995-1996, 1997-1998

Admissions Committee, New York University, History Department, 1997-1998

Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee, New York University, History Department, 1995-1996, 1997-1998

Courses Taught

History of Latin America and the Caribbean (undergraduate history survey)
World Cultures: Latin America (undergraduate interdisciplinary survey)
History of the Caribbean (advanced undergraduate survey)
African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (undergraduate seminar)
Literature of the Field: Modern Latin America (graduate readings course)
Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (graduate readings course)
Independence Movements in Latin America (graduate readings course)
Nineteenth-Century Caribbean (graduate readings course)
Ph.D. Methods Seminar in Comparative and Transnational History (with Karen Kupperman)

Memberships

American Historical Association
Conference on Latin American History
Latin American Studies Association
Association of Caribbean History