HISPANIC NEW YORK AND THE LATINOIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES: PANEL DISCUSSION & BOOK LAUNCH – SEPTEMBER 15, 6PM-8PM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Davis Auditorium
Morris A. Schapiro Center
530 West 120th Street (Between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue)
Columbia University

For directions, click here: www.cap.columbia.edu/parking-CAPMF.htm

The Hispanic New York Project and Columbia University’s Center for American Studies are pleased to invite you to the panel discussion and launch event for Hispanic New York; A Sourcebook (Columbia University Press, 2010). The panel will feature some of the contributors to the anthology, and will be followed by a conversation with the audience. With Paul Berman, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Milagros Ricourt, Claudio Iván Remeseira (editor), and Virginia Sánchez Korrol. Moderated by PBS Senior correspondent and Destination Casa Blanca‘s host Ray Suárez.

The event will take place on September 15, 2010, at Columbia University’s Davis Auditorium at Morris A. Schapiro Center, 530 West 120th Street. FREE ACCESS – SEATS ARE LIMITED – FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED. In order to ensure a seat, we suggest arriving 15 minutes prior to the beginning of the event. A Reception will follow.

Co-sponsored by Columbia University’s Center for American Studies and by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and by the New-York Historical Society.

To cover the event or to get further information, please reply to this email or contact Victoria Benítez at vb2239@columbia.edu

INFORMATION ON THE BOOK

Read an excerpt from the introduction, “New York City and the Emergence of a New Hemispheric Identity,” at www.cup.columbia.edu/media/5943/hispanic-new-york-excerpt.pdf

For reviews of Hispanic New York on the local and international press, see www.columbia.edu/cu/amstudies/hny.html

For a review copy, please send request to Derek Warker, dw2216@columbia.edu

INFORMATION ON THE EVENT

Over the past few decades, a huge wave of immigration turned New York into a microcosm of the Americas and enhanced its role as the crossroads of the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds. Yet far from being an alien group within a “mainstream” and supposedly pure “Anglo” America, people referred to as Hispanics or Latinos have been part and parcel of New York since the beginning of the city’s history. Along with Hispanics in the rest of the country, they represent what the quintessential American (and New Yorker) poet Walt Whitman once celebrated as “the Spanish element of our nationality”. In the context of the Arizona immigration law debate and the anti-Latino backlash in many parts of the country, the awareness of that cultural heritage is more relevant than ever. We hope the panel discussion will help frame the current discussion on immigration, Latinos, and American identity in a broader historical and hemispheric perspective.

The Participants

Paul Berman is a writer on politics and literature whose articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, the New Republic (where he is a contributing editor), the New Yorker, Slate, the Village Voice, Dissent. Letras Libres, and various other publications. Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, his most recent book is The Flight of the Intellectuals.

Andrew Delbanco is Director of the Center of American Studies and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of many books, including Melville: His World and Work (2005) and writes regularly on American culture for the New York Review of Books and other publications.

Gabriel Haslip-Viera is Chair of the Department of Sociology, City College, City University of New York. He was director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (1997-2000) and Chair of the former Department of Latin American and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at City College (1993-1995 and 1985-1991). Editor of The Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics and co-editor of Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the making of New York City and Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition, among other books and articles.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and scholar. She is the author of Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture, among other books, and director of the films Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican and For the Record: Guam and World War II. Named in 2005 by Hispanic Business as one of the 100 Most Influential Latinos, Negron-Muntaner is currently the Director of Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

Milagros Ricourt is Chair of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York. She is the author of Dominicans in New York City: Power From the Margins and co-author of Hispanas de Queens: Latino Panethnicity in a New York City Neighborhood.

Virginia Sánchez Korrol is Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. In 2007 she received the New York Public Library Award for Best of Reference for Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, co-edited with Vicki L. Ruiz, professor at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Sánchez Korrol’s latest book, co-authored with Pedro Juan Hernández, is Pioneros II:: Puerto Ricans in New York City (1948-1998)

Claudio Iván Remeseira is the Founder and Director of the Hispanic New York Project, an academic and public interest initiative hosted by Columbia University’s Center for American Studies. He is also the editor of a blog on Latino & Latin American culture and community news [hispanicnewyorkproject.blogspot.com/].

RAY SUAREZ is the host of Destination Casa Blanca (HITN) and Senior Correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, show that he joined in 1999 after hosting for six years the nationwide call-in news program Talk of the Nation in National Public Radio (NPR). Named by Hispanic Business magazine as one the “100 Influentials” among American Latinos, Mr. Suarez’s essays and criticisms have been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, among other print media. A native of Brooklyn, he currently lives in the District of Columbia with his wife and two children.

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