July 2013 - History Department - University of British Columbia

Alejandra Bronfman
Associate Professor
Dept. of History
University of British Columbia
alejandra.bronfman@ubc.ca
604-374-5211
Education
Princeton University
Ph.D. in History, November 2000
Dissertation: “Reforming Race in Cuba, 1902-1940” Advisor: Jeremy Adelman
M.A in History, 1996. Fields of examination: Major field: Modern Latin America:
(Jeremy Adelman). Minor fields: Colonial Latin America: (Kenneth Mills), and
Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France: (Robert Darnton).
Cornell University
B.A., in History, 1994. Magna Cum Laude, History, with Distinction in all subjects.
Professional and Teaching Experience
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia, 2006-present
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia, 2003-2006
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Yale University, September 2002-May 2003
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Florida, September 2000-May
2002
Assistant Instructor, Princeton University, History 303 “Colonial Latin America”, Fall 1996.
Fellowships and Honors
UBC HSS Hampton Research Grant, “Biography of a Sonic Archive” $ 18,000 2012-2014.
Smithsonian Institution Lemelson Centre for Technology. Research Grant, Spring 2012.
UBC HSS Hampton Research Grant, “Talking Machines” $7000, 2010-2012.
SSHRC Individual Research Grant, 2005-2009, $62,000
Early Career Scholar, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British
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Columbia, 2004-2005
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Latin American Studies Center, University of Maryland, Fall 2001
Graduate Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Society of Fellows, Princeton University,
1998-1999, 1999-2000
International Doctoral Research Fellow, Social Science Research Council and American
Council of Learned Societies, 1997-1998.
Research Grant, Johns Hopkins Latin American Studies Cuba Exchange Program, 1998.
Frederick George Marcham Scholarship, Cornell University 1992, 1993
Anne MacIntyre Litchfield prize for Outstanding Senior Women, Cornell University,1993
Publications
Books
Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940. University of North
Carolina Press, 2004.
On the Move: The Caribbean Since 1989. Zed Books, 2007.
Isole in movimento. Cuba e i Caraibi dal 1989. EDT, 2008 (Italian translation of On the Move,
with a new postscript)
Media, Sound and Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean. Co-edited with Andrew Wood.
Pittsburgh University Press, 2012.
Articles
“Birth of a Station: Broadcasting, Governance and the Waning Colonial State in Jamaica”
Small Axe. In press.
“Batista is Dead: Media, Violence and Politics in 1950s Cuba” in Caribbean Studies vol. 40, no.
1 (January-June 2012): 37-58.
“The Fantastic Flying Donkey and the Tattoo” in Radical History Review, No. 113 (Spring
2012)
“Tales Full of Sound, Signifying Something: A Review Essay” Social History 35:2 (May 2010)
“The Allure of Technology: Photographs, Statistics and the Elusive Female Criminal in
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1930’s Cuba” Gender and History Vol 19 #1 (April 2007) 60-77.
“’En plena libertad y democracia’: Negros Brujos and the Social Question, 1904-1919.”
Hispanic American Historical Review (August, 2002)
“’Unsettled and Nomadic’: Law, Anthropology and Race in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba”.
University of Maryland Latin American Studies Center Working Papers Series, 2002, #9.
“La barbarie y sus descontentos: raza y civilización, 1912-1919” in Temas, no. 24-25, enero-junio
2001. (Havana)
“Reading Maceo’s Skull, or, the Paradoxes of Race” in Princeton University’s Program in
Latin American Studies Boletín, Fall, 1998.
Book Chapters
“El nacience público oyente: Towards a Genealogy of the Audience in Early Republican Cuba” in
Amparo Sánchez Cobos ed, After the Intervention: Civics, Sociability and Applied Science in the New
Cuba, 1895-1933 (in press, Duke University Press).
“El Octopus Acústico: Broadcasting and Empire in the Caribbean” in Michele Hilmes and
Jason Loviglio, eds. Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era (New York: Routledge
Press, 2013).
“Introduction” co-written with Andrew Wood, in Bronfman and Wood, eds., Media, Sound
and Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2012).
“Weapons of the Geek: Romantic Narratives, Sonic Technologies, and Tinkerers in 1930s
Santiago” in Bronfman and Wood, eds., Media, Sound and Culture in Latin America and the
Caribbean (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2012).
“On Swelling: Slavery, Social Science and Medicine in the 19 th Century” in Maarit Ford and
Diana Paton, eds. Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing.
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).
"Mismeasured Women: Gender and Social Science on the Eve of Female Suffrage in Cuba"
in William French and Katherine Bliss, eds. Gender and Sexuality in Latin America. (Rowman
and Littlefield, 2007).
"Poetry in the Presidio: Towards a Study of Fernado Ortiz's Proyecto de Código Criminal
Cubano" in Mauricio Font and Alfonso Quiroz, eds. Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of
Fernando Ortiz. (Lexington Press, 2005).
“Mas allá del color: ‘la Guerrita del 12’ en Cienfuegos” in Rebecca Scott and Fernando
Martínez, eds., Espacios, silencios, y los sentidos de la libertad: Cuba, 1878-1912. (Havana:
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Ediciones Unión, 2001).
Works in Progress
A Voice in a Box: Empire, Media and Affiliation in the Caribbean (book project)
Co-edited special issue of Hispanic American Historical Review on sound and new media
Biography of a Sonic Archive (book project)
Book Reviews (since 2006)
Matthew Karush, Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920-
1946 Duke University Press, 2012, in Canadian Journal of History, forthcoming.
Brian Moore and Michele Johnson, They do as they please: The Jamaican Struggle for Cultural
Freedom after Morant Bay (University of West Indies Press, 2013) in Journal of Interdisciplinary
History vol. 43 no. 4 (2013)
Marial Iglesias, A Cultural History of Cuba during the US Occupation, 1898-1902 (University of
North Carolina Press, 2011), in New West Indian Guide 87-1&2, (2013).
Stephen Palmer, Launching Global Health: The Caribbean Odyssey of the Rockefeller Foundation
(University of Michigan Press, 2010. American Historical Review, 2011.
Sidney Mintz, Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations (Harvard University
Press, 2010) in Caribbean Studies, Volume 38, No. 2, July-December 2010.
Gillian McGillivray, Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class and State Formation in Cuba, 1898-
1959 (Duke University Press, 2010) in World Sugar History Newsletter, No. 40, Sept. 2010.
Jana Lipman, Guantánamo: A Working Class History Between Empire and Revolution (University of
California Press, 2008) in Labour/Le Travail, Fall 2010.
Consuelo Naranjo Orovio, ed. Historia de Cuba, Historia de las Antillas, Vol. 1 (Ediciones Doce
Calles, 2009) in Hispanic American Historical Review Vol. 90, No. 4, Nov. 2010.
Mark Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History (University
of California Press, 2007) In Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 39, No. 4, Spring 2009.
Jonathan Ablard, Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists and the Argentine State, 1880-1983
(Ohio University Press, 2008) in American Historical Review Vol. 114, No. 4, December, 2009.
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Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories
in the Nineteenth Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006) in A Contra Corriente Vol. 5, No.
1, Fall 2007.
José Buscaglia-Salgado, Undoing Empire: Race and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean (University of
Minnesota Press, 2003) in Hispanic American Historical Review Vol. 86, No. 1, February 2006.
O. Hugo Benavides , Making Ecuadorian Histories: Four Centuries of Defining Power ( University
of Texas Press, 2004) in Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 37, No. 2, Autumn 2006.
Papers presented (select list)
“Jamaica derive!”: Voice and the Politics of Creole in the Caribbean” Radio Conference
2013, Luton, UK, July 13, 2013.
“His Master’s Wires: Towards an Acoustics of Resistance” Latin American Studies Association
Conference, Washington, DC, May 30, 2013.
“Cosmopolitan Artefacts: Recordings, Repatriation, and Method”, Artefacts of Encounter,
University of British Columbia, April 2013.
“Voice, Language, Radio” New Directions in Caribbean Sound, sponsored by Critical Caribbean
Studies Initiative, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, April 26, 2013.
Comment, “The Science of Improvement: Race, Public Health and Politics in Latin
America” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, January 3-6, 2013.
“In Search of the Radiolette, In the Grip of Invisible Rays” UBC Science and Technology Studies
Colloquium, November 2012. (Invited talk.)
“Sound, Dread, Desire” Snap, Crackle and Hum: Electromagnetism, Sound and Audio Art
Symposium Surrey Art Gallery, October 2012 (Invited talk)
“Ambivalent Histories: British Empire and Broadcasting in the West Indies” North American
Conference on British Studies, Montreal, 8-10 October, 2012.
“Cosmopolitan Artefacts: Recordings, Repatriation, and Method” Whose Music Is It,
Anyway?: The Politics of Property and Archives in Brazil, the Americas, and at Columbia University,
Columbia University, New York, September 2012. (Invited talk)
Organizer and participant, “Latin America Listens: Sound, Archives and the Production of
Knowledge” Latin American Studies Association Meeting, San Francisco, May 2012.
“Batista Está Muerto: Tecnología y Violencia” Universidad del Pacífico, Lima Peru, April
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2012. (Invited talk).
“El Octopus Acústico: Radiodifusión e Imperio en el Caribe” Universidad del Pacífico, Lima
Peru, April 2012. (Invited talk).
Comment, Panel on Scientific Racism, Conference on Race and Ethnicity, University of San
Diego, October 2011
“Loudspeakers in Villages: Broadcasting and Governance in Jamaica” Caribbean Studies
Association, Curacao, May 2011.
“El Octopus Acústico: Contours of the Public in Republican Cuba” Cuba, Envisioning Futures
Conference. Bildner Center for Graduate Study, CUNY, New York City, March 2011.
“Archiving Violence and the Politics of Truth in US-Occupied Haiti” Workshop: Machines of
Memory: Archival Technologies and the Genealogy of Datapower. Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science, Berlin, October 2010.
“Talking Machines: Technology, Violence and the Politics of Truth in US-Occupied Haiti”
Association of Caribbean Historians Conference, Barbados, May 2010.
“El naciente público oyente: Towards a Genealogy of the Audience” Workshop: After the
Intervention: Civics, Sociability and Applied Science in the New Cuba, University of Windsor, April
2010. (Invited talk)
“Batista is Dead: Radio and Political Violence in 1950s Cuba” Workshop: The Caribbean in the
1950s. University of California in Los Angeles, January 2010. (Invited talk)
“Media Epistemologies and the Problem of History” Caribbean Studies Committee
Roundtable, “Why We Know What We Know About the Caribbean: Race, Culture and the
Roots of Disciplinary Knowledge” American Historical Association, January 2010. (Invited talk)
Chair and Comment, “Sound, Media and Culture in Latin America” Latin American Studies
Association, Rio de Janeiro June 2009.
“Amateurs in the Tropics: Shortwave and the Waning Colonial State” Annual Conference of the
Committee for History of Technology, Victoria, BC, August, 2008.
“A Contingent Liason? Slavery, Social Science and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century
Caribbean” Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing, University of
Newcastle, UK, July, 2008. (Invited talk)
“Batista is Dead: Technology and Political Violence in 1950s Cuba” Canadian Association of
Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vancouver, BC, June 2008.
“Radio and the Cacophony of Politics in 1950s Cuba” Caribbean Studies Association, San
Andres, Colombia, May, 2008.
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“Voces en el aire: Power, Culture and Technology in Cuba” A Changing Cuba in a Changing
World, Bildner Center, City University of New York, NYC, March 2008.
“Radio Frontiers: Listening, Space and Modernity in the Caribbean” American Historical
Association, Atlanta, Georgia, January 2007.
“Radio Frontiers: Listening, Space and Modernity in the Caribbean” Canadian Association of
Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Calgary, September, 2006.
“Listen, Write, Talk: Explorations of Radio Programming in 1950s Cuba” Latin American
Studies Association, Puerto Rico, March 2006.
“The Sound of Modernity: On the Origins of Radio in Haiti” Society For Caribbean Studies
Conference, London, July 2006.
“Photograps, Statistics and Virtue in 1930’s Cuba.” University College of Fraser Valley,
Distinguished Speaker Lecture Series, Abbotsford, BC. March 2005. (Invited talk)
“Between Science and Politics: Reflections on the Production of Knowledge in Cuba, 1900-
1940. Simon Fraser University, Symposium on Race and Ethnicity. March 2005.
"Radio, Technology and Transformation in the Caribbean: A Proposal" Paper prepared for
A Pan-Caribbean Perspective on the Atlantic World: New Directions in Scholarship, York University,
Toronto, 14-16 October, 2004.
"Mismeasured Women: Gender and Social Science on the Eve of Female Suffrage in Cuba."
The Body and the Body Politic, University of Maryland, April, 2003.
“From Comparsas to Constitutions: Defining Rights in the Age of ‘Slippery Populism.’”
Paper presented at the Washington Area Symposium on Latin American History, University
of Maryland, Nov. 8-9, 2002.
“Rafael Serra, Citizenship and Civil Society” Paper prepared for Symposium on Citizens and
Society in Republican Cuba” Santiago, Cuba, September 2001.
“Tragedia Intima: Critiques of Afrocubanismo and Mestizaje in 1930’s Cuba.” Latin American
Studies Association, Washington DC, September 6-8, 2001.
“Poetry in the Presidio: Towards a study of Fernando Ortiz’s Proyecto de Código Criminal
Cubano.” Cuban Counterpoints: Fernando Ortiz Symposium on Cuban Culture and History, Graduate
School and University Center, City University of New York, March 20-22, 2000.
“Barbarism and Its Discontents.” American Historical Association, Chicago, Illinois, January 6-
9, 2000.
“Contesting History: Unión Fraternal Narrates its Past.” Second Cuban Research Institute
Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, Florida International University, March 1999.
“Unsettled and Nomadic: Law, Anthropology, and Race in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba.”
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Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 24-26, 1998.
“Tutelage, Convergence and Implication: American Science in the Caribbean.” Organization of
American Historians, Indianapolis, Indiana. April 3-5, 1998
“Mas allá del color: la ‘Guerrita del 12’ en Cienfuegos.” Taller de Historia, Cienfuegos, Cuba,
March 5-8, 1998.
“Race War?: A View from Cienfuegos, 1912”: First Cuban Research Institute Conference on Cuban
and Cuban-American Studies, Florida International University, Oct. 9-11,
1997.
Teaching
Undergraduate
Global Commodities (World History 105)
History of Media (World History 105)
History of Latin America
Modern Caribbean History
Race and Nation in Latin America and the Caribbean
Gender and Sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean
History of Cuba
Honors Seminar on History of the Media
Seminar on Revolution and Memory in Latin America and the Caribbean
Seminar on Cultures of US Imperialism
Theory and Practice of History
Graduate
PhD and MA Research Seminar
Readings in Race and Ethnicity
Readings in Latin American History
Transnational and Global Histories
Directed readings in History of Media, Caribbean History
Graduate Students
Supervised:
Current students:
Victoria Padilla (MA) Natural disasters and environmental history in Venezuela: El Niño, droughts,
fires and agrarian society.
Farha Guerrero (MA) Tourism and Indigeneity in Patagonia.
Co-supervised
Gabriela Aceves (PhD) Mujeres que se Visualizan: Film, Performance, Photography and the
Archive in post-1968 Mexico.
Robert Sam Fenn (MA) Teenage Kicks: Hierarchies of Taste in Canada's New Drug Scene, 1965-
1975.
Completed
Darcy Gaechter (MA 2007) Colonos and the Politics of Oil in Ecuador
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Katherine Mooney (MA, 2010) Spirituality and Memory in the Dominican Republic
Cary Garcia Yero (MA, 2010) “Is It Just About Love: Filin and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary
Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Popular Culture Studies, Volume 30 (2012)
In addition, presently on committees of 10 PhD students in a variety of fields.
SERVICE TO PROFESSION (since 2008)
Conference selection committee, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, 2014
Reviewer for University of North Carolina Press, New York University Press, University of
Florida Press, University of Michigan Press, Journal of Latin American Studies, Journal for History
of Sexuality, Hispanic American Historical Review.
Tenure reviews for University of California Los Angeles, University of Texas at Austin,
University of New Brunswick.
Fellowship Selection Committee, American Council of Learned Societies, NY, 2013.
Grant Adjudication committees for Social Science Research Council, NY, and Social Science
and Humanities Research Council, Ottawa, CN. 2005-present.
Board of editors, Hispanic American Historical Review, 2008-2014.
Advisory Board, Digital Library of the Caribbean, 2008-present.
Chair, Bryce Wood Book Prize in Latin American History, Latin American Studies
Association, 2009.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
“Hidden Histories: Haiti’s Present and Its Past” University of British Columbia, January
2010.
“What do we know about Haiti?” S.U.C.C.E.S.S. BC, Vancouver, BC, January 2010.
CBC Interview on Haiti, January 2010.
CBC World International Interview on Cuba and Castro, July 2010.
“On paper: Haiti and the Earthquake” HHH Memorial, Vancouver, BC, January 2011.
Previous Career:
Professional dancer: Washington Ballet, Washington, DC, 1980-83; Finis Jhung’s Chamber
Ballet, New York City, 1983-84; Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle, 1984-1990.
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