The Cuban Research Institute, the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, and the Libraries at Florida International University are pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grant competition. The awards are offered in honor of Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala, the prominent music collector and independent scholar who donated his Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection to FIU in 2001. This is the fourteenth round of winners of the grants, designed to increase access to the special collections and archives on Cuba and its diaspora at FIU. Grant recipients will spend a week studying the collections and give a lecture during their stay at FIU.
The following scholars will conduct research at the Díaz-Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection during the spring and early summer of 2019:
- Dean Craven, Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology, King's College, London, "Manufacturing Montuno, Manufacturing Identity: Human Agency and Improvisation of Piano Accompaniments in Cuban Dance Musics"
- Andrés García Molina, Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology, Columbia University, "Aural Economies and Precarious Labor: El pregón, or Street Vendor Songs in Cuba"
- Dr. Lillian Guerra, Professor of History, University of Florida, "Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961–81"
For more information about the Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grants, click here .