SPAP Professors Present At Columbia Festival of the Arts

Professors Eyda Merediz and Ryan Long to Present at the Columbia Festival of the Arts in Columbia, Maryland

SPAP Professors Eyda Merediz and Ryan Long to Present at the Columbia Festival of the Arts in Columbia, Maryland!

Founded in 1987, Columbia Festival of the Arts is Howard County’s largest ongoing arts event. CFA presents four weekend-long arts festivals throughout the year comprised of both free and ticketed events featuring world-class performances, exhibitions, concerts, family activities, master classes, workshops and community dialogues. The Festival brings together the arts community, businesses, local schools, and individuals to create events that shine a spotlight, not only on the arts, but also on the Howard County community as a Maryland showplace.

Lecture: “Cinema in Cuba”
By Eyda Merediz, Associate Professor of Spanish and Head of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Maryland

April 9, 2016: 7:00pm-8:30pm

As the cultural wall comes down between the US and Cuba, there is much curiosity about the kinds of art that have been made by a country hidden from view for a half-century. Dr. Merediz will provide an inside look and some historical perspective on one such area – the Cuban cinema.

Eyda Merediz arrived at the University of Maryland after finishing her doctoral degree at Princeton University and teaching at Union and Smith Colleges. She is the Head of the and Associate Professor of Latin American literature and culture at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese School of Languages, Literature, and Cultures at the University of Maryland. She specializes in Cuban literature and cinema, and her academic interests concentrate primarily on the fields of Colonial Latin American Studies and Early Modern Transatlantic Literatures and Cultures.

For more information on this lecture, check out the event’s page on the festival’s website: http://columbiafestival.org/event/lecture-cinema-in-cuba/

Lecture: “The Visual Arts in Post-Revolutionary Mexico”
By Ryan Long, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Maryland

April 22, 2016: 7:00pm-8:30pm

The 1930’s and 40s – immediately following the Mexican Revolution – were an optimistic period for many artists, who conceived of their work as contributing to the construction of a more just and equal society. Dr. Long will discuss and answer questions about a range of visual artists, from the very well-known muralists and Frida Kahlo, to lesser-known figures, such as the members of the Workshop for Popular Graphic Art (Taller de Gráfica Popular, or TGP).

After receiving his PhD from Duke University in 2002, Ryan Long taught Spanish at the University of Oklahoma for 11 years. His publications include work on the EZLN [Zapatista Army of National Liberation], Mexican cinema, prison literature, and writers such as Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, María Luisa Mendoza, José Gorostiza, Juan Villoro, Laura Esquivel, and Roberto Bolaño. His book, Fictions of Totality: The Mexican Novel, 1968, and the National-Popular State, was published in 2008 by Purdue University Press. In addition to shorter pieces about Cristina Rivera Garza and Bruno Montané, he is currently working on two book projects, one about Bolaño and another about the Swiss architect and one-time Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer, who lived and worked in Mexico from 1939 to 1949.

For more information on this lecture, check out the event’s page on the festival’s website: http://columbiafestival.org/event/lecture-the-visual-arts-in-post-revolution-mexico/

For more information about the Columbia Festival of the Arts, please see http://columbiafestival.org or check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ColumbiaFestival/timeline.