Marturano, who teaches Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultural studies in the Spanish and Portuguese department at UCLA, will take over the program from historian Robin Derby, effective July 1, 2020.

UCLA International Institute, May 18, 2020 —  Professor Jorge Marturano of the department of Spanish & Portuguese will become director of the Program on Caribbean Studies of the UCLA Latin American Institute in the 2020–21 academic year, effective July 1.

Marturano's principal research and teaching interests include testimonial writing and prison narratives in Latin America, the role of Cuban cultural institutions and organizations during the Cuban Republic, culture and politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, Latin American and Caribbean fiction and race and ethnicity in the Americas.

His book, "Narrativas de encierro en la República cubana" (Editorial Verbum, 2017), focuses on the relationship between prison narratives, the literary imagination of enclosure and the cultural field during the Cuban Republic. Marturano has also co-edited a volume on Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, "Asedios a lo increado: Nuevas perspectivas sobre Lezama Lima" (Editorial Verbum, 2015).

Having previously served as acting director of the Program on Caribbean Studies during the 2017–18 academic year, Marturano and has worked with outgoing program director Professor Robin Debry to organize various working groups on Cuba and the Caribbean, bringing dozens of scholars to UCLA to speak about racial issues, intellectual and cultural history, cultural studies and literature of the Caribbean.  

Derby, who has led the program since it's founding in fall 2016, has decided to step down as director at the end of the current academic year.  The UCLA International Institute expresses its sincere gratitude to Robin for her dedicated and inspiring leadership of the program over the past several years. She has worked collaboratively with faculty, students, external stakeholders and the leadership and staff of the Latin American Institute to build the Program on Caribbean Studies into an important locus for the study of the greater Caribbean at UCLA.

Derby has also provided very important contributions to the International Institute and the campus as a whole in her positions as institute equity Advisor and faculty director of International Education Office. We are pleased that she will continue her leadership in thEse roles. 

Please join us in thanking Professor Robin Derby for her contributions and in welcoming Professor Jorge Marturano to his leadership role at the Program on Caribbean Studies of the Latin American Institute.

Published: Monday, May 18, 2020