A01=Alison Fraunhar
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Afro-Latina
Afrocuban religion
Art History
Author_Alison Fraunhar
Caribbean
Caribbean Studies
Category=AGA
Category=JBSF1
Category=JBSL
Category=NHK
Catholicism
cuban identity
culture
culture deletion
Drag
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
erotics
film
fine art
gender
gender and race assignment
gender identity
gender performance
graphic arts
history
identity
LGBTQ
mestizaje
music
packaging
performance
Queer
race identity
race performance
republic
revolution
Spanish colonialism
theory
Women's Studoes
Product details
- ISBN 9781496814432
- Weight: 825g
- Dimensions: 155 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 30 Aug 2018
- Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Repeatedly and powerfully throughout Cuban history, the mulata, a woman of mixed racial identity, features prominently in Cuban visual and performative culture. Tracing the figure, Alison Fraunhar looks at the representation and performance in both elite and popular culture. She also tracks how characteristics associated with these women have accrued across the Atlantic world.
Widely understood to embody the bridge between European subject and African other, the mulata contains the sensuality attributed to Africans in a body more closely resembling the European ideal of beauty. This symbol bears far-reaching implications, with shifting, contradictory cultural meanings in Cuba. Fraunhar explores these complex paradigms, how, why, and for whom the image was useful, and how it was both subverted and asserted from the colonial period to the present. From the early seventeenth century through Cuban independence in 1899 up to the late revolutionary era, Fraunhar illustrates the ambiguous figure's role in nationhood, citizenship, and commercialism. She analyzes images including key examples of nineteenth-century graphic arts, avant-garde painting and magazine covers of the Republican era, cabaret and film performance, and contemporary iterations of gender.
Fraunhar's study stands out for attending to the phenomenon of mulataje not only in elite production such as painting, but also in popular forms: popular theater, print culture, later films, and other media where stereotypes take hold. Indeed, in contemporary Cuba, mulataje remains a popular theme with Cubans as well as foreigners in drag shows, reflecting queerness in visual culture.
Alison Fraunhar, Chicago, Illinois, is associate professor of art and design at Saint Xavier University. Her work on Cuban art has been published in such periodicals as Women's Art Journal; Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media & Composite Cultures; and Hispanic Research Journal as well as in the edited volume Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and National Identity.
