Maya Berry

Maya J. Berry received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2016. At Yale she will continue the work of her dissertation, Afro-Cuban Movement(s): Performing Autonomy in “Updating” Havana, which investigates the performative effects of black artists working professionally in both sacred and secular settings as Cuba “updates” its political economy. She has been appointed assistant professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, beginning in the 2017 – 2018 academic year. -- ism.yale.edu/people/maya-berry

Maya J. Berry (maya.berry@utexas.edu) (Ford Foundation Fellow 2011–2014) is a third generation Cuban-American and an artist-scholar of Afro-Cuban dance. She completed her Master’s degree in Performance Studies at NYU and is currently a doctoral candidate of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin in the African Diaspora Program. She is a recipient of the 2015 Zora Neale Hurston Travel Award from the Association for Feminist Anthropology. Her current work explores Afro-Cuban performance practices and self organization strategies as a window into the nature of Black representation and self-making in the Americas. Previous work on the management and production of “national culture” has been published in the Afro-Hispanic Review. -- “Salvándose” in Contemporary Havana: Rumba’s Paradox for Black Identity Politics  3/1/2015 Black Diaspora Review

“Salvándose” in Contemporary Havana: Rumba’s Paradox for Black Identity Politics  3/1/2015 Black Diaspora Review: "In the scholarship of anti-racist struggle in Cuba, rumberos (rumba practitioners) are typically ignored for operating within racist folkloric stereotypes that further the commodification and appropriation of Black expressive culture by the state. This ethnographic case study explores how the Afro-religious urban poor in Havana deploy rumba within the sacred sphere to perform an affirming Black cultural difference and create an alternative market in which to secure autonomous economic and socio-spiritual sustenance: salvándose (saving themselves). This particular form of political agency finds itself in a paradoxical relationship with the dominant ideological thrust of the “New Afro-Cuban movement” against racism. Using performance theory, Black feminism(s), and political economy, this study found that performances by and for this overlooked sector in the sacred sphere cannot be dismissed as insignificant vis-à-vis antiracist objections to the narrow social definition of Blackness as folklore and the increasingly narrow opportunities for Afro-Cubans in the emerging private market. A performance-oriented lens can offer key insights into how alternative Black political consciousness is developed and transmitted across generations."