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Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 4:30 PM To: Bertram Gordon The Tourism Studies Working Group is pleased to announce our upcoming colloquium: Comparative Aesthetics of Cityscapes: Havana and Trinidad, Cuba Maki Tanaka Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, UC Berkeley Friday, November 20 4-6 p.m. Room 101, Archaeological Research Facility 2251 College Avenue University of California, Berkeley ABSTRACT: This paper reflects on aesthetic possibilities that materialize in the post-Soviet economy of Cuba. Cuban landscape has historically marked distinct aesthetics that were afforded by political economy of the times. More recently, as Cuba reinserted itself to the global economy after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, albeit in its own socialist manner, new cityscape began to emerge largely in response to the upsurge in international tourism. Nevertheless, this landscape is not uniform throughout the island. Different forces are at play in different localities, and the built material testifies to such effects. In this paper, I compare two buildings in two localities—Colegio Universitario San Gerónimo in Havana, and Hotel Iberostar in Trinidad, Sancti Spíritus. Both buildings were inaugurated in 2006, and both are an effort of historic preservation in a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Havana’s Colegio Universitario is a restoration of the first university in Cuba by the powerful Office of the City Historian of Havana, billed as “new architecture in active dialogue with codes of the past that is recreated and characterized in contemporary language.” In fact, it is a strikingly modern building with one facade that integrates a replica of the original bell tower. In contrast, Hotel Iberostar in Trinidad is a careful representation of the historic building under joint investment of a Cuban hotel business and a Spanish one. I argue that the aesthetics realized in these constructions are quite incompatible because of what these cities represent. The comparison offers us an insight into cityscapes embodying the politics of historic preservation in post-Soviet Cuba. SPEAKER BIO: Maki Tanaka is a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in the urban landscape of World Heritage sites, especially how preservation efforts, historic imagination, and touristic practices shape the urban space. Maki has conducted her fieldwork in Trinidad, Cuba in 2007-8, and is writing her dissertation (tentatively) titled “Heritage modernity: The cityscape of post-Soviet economy in Trinidad, Cuba.” She is co-chair of Tourism Studies Working Group, 2009-2010, and has been a core member since 2003. Maki is also involved in the UC system-wide academic initiative, UC-Cuba, and is an organizing member for the 2010 graduate students workshop in UC Berkeley. For more information about this event or about our ongoing colloquium series, write to tourism@berkeley.edu or visit us at www.tourismstudies.org.
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