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Alejandra Bronfman

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 Experienc

Associate Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia, 2007-present

 Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia, 2003-2007

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Yale University, September 2002-May 2003

Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Florida, September 2000-May 2002

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 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

Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean. University of North Carolina Press, 2016

Media, Sound and Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean. Co-edited with Andrew Wood. Pittsburgh University Press, 2012.

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)

Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940. University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Articles

“Forum Introduction: Listening for History”, with Christine Ehrick, “Forum on Sound and Listening”, co-edited by Alejandra Bronfman and Christine Ehrick, Hispanic American Historical Review, (2016) 96(2): 211-215.

“Biography of a Sonic Archive” Hispanic American Historical Review (2016) 96(2): 225-231.

“Fugitive Sounds” invited essay in book forum on Alexandra Vazquez, Listening in Detail. Small Axe, Vol. 20 no 1 49, March 2016: 155-163

“Birth of a Station: Broadcasting, Governance and the Waning Colonial State in Jamaica” Small Axe. Volume 18, no. 2, July 2014 (No. 44): 36-52.

“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 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 naciente 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 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).

“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: Ediciones Unión, 2001)

In progress

Biography of a Sonic Archive (book project)

“Laura Boulton and the Cyborgs” article in progress.

“Glittery: The Entangled Histories of Radio, Mica and Female and Child Labor” article in progress.

“The Case of the Missing Archive” article in progress.

Book Reviews (since 2007)

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.

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.

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.

Presentations (since 2007)

“Laura Boulton and the Cyborgs”: Natural History and the Ontology of Sound Recording” The Société Française d’Ethnomusicologie (SFE) and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) Joint Conference, Paris, July 2015

““I want you to get the sound of it”: Sound, Media, Blackness” Keynote Address, University of Stony Brook Graduate Conference, Media and Belonging, New York City, April 2015

“Records of the Sonic Exotic” American Historical Association Annual Conference, New York City, January 2015

“What is Broadcasting and Where are the Americas?” Keynote address, Bielefeld University Summer School, Broadcasting the Americas, July 2014

“Voice: Sonic Blackness and the Politics of Creole in Haiti and Jamaica” Association of Caribbean Historians, Martinique, May 2014

“Voice: Sonic Blackness and the Politics of Creole in Haiti and Jamaica” Race in the Americas: Rethinking Transnational Analysis Conference, April 2014. Claremont Graduate University. Invited talk

“Screeches and Silence in the Caribbean: Towards a Transnational Geography of Radio” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Seattle, March 2014

“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 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.

“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.

 

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