Vanderbilt’s program in Latino and Latina Studies will welcome poet, memoirist and scholar Gustavo Pérez Firmat to campus on Friday, April 11. Firmat will give a short lecture and reading at 4 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 102. Books will be available for purchase and signing at a reception immediately following the reading.
Firmat is the author of Bilingual Blues, The Havana Habit and Next Year in Cuba, among other works. His book Life on the Hyphen, a study of Cuban-American culture, was awarded the Eugene M. Kayden University Press National Book Award.
Other awards include fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and teaches at Columbia University.
Currently in its first year, the program in Latino and Latina Studies at Vanderbilt is a multidisciplinary program that considers the presence of Latinas/os and Hispanics as an integral part of U.S. culture and history. The program seeks to understand the contributions of Latinas/os and how they represent a central pillar for intellectual reflection and cultural production in the nation.
For more information, visit as.vanderbilt.edu/latinolatinastudies.