The Center for Caribbean Studies at Casa de las Americas, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Caribbean Department of the University of Havana are hosting a colloquium about Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier and his relationship with Caribbean literature and cultures. The colloquium, “Carpentier y sus relaciones caribeñas: tres perspectivas” [Carpentier and His Caribbean Relationship: Three Perspectives], will take Friday, May 29, place at 2:00pm at the Latin American Room at the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Havana.

The afternoon lectures will be “Los pasos hacia el reino” [The Steps Towards the Kingdom] presented by Graziella Pogolotti, “Gobernar el rocío y reinar en este mundo” [Governing the Dew and Reigning in this World] by Dr. José A. Baujín, and “El Caribe en la narrativa histórica de Carpentier y Benítez Rojo” [The Caribbean in the Historical Narrative of Carpentier and Benítez Rojo] by Haydée Arango.

The colloquium is part of an ongoing program of study called Texturas Caribeñas [Caribbean Textures] that is taking place through 2009. It centers on discussions of the first editions of three seminal texts for Caribbean cultural dialogue: Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d´un retour au pays natal (1939); Alejo Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo (1949); and Éloge de la Créolité (1989), by Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant.

For more information, you may write to caribe@casa.cult.cu or see http://www.casadelasamericas.org/centroestudios/centroestudioscaribe.php?pagina=caribe

Photo of Alejo Carpentier  from http://www.lajiribilla.co.cu/2003/n133_11/133_27.html