Edna Rodriguez-Plate
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies
Edna M. Rodríguez-Plate's research and teaching begin with basic questions about identity, from individual identities to a collective social-national identity: How are identities constructed, represented and contested culturally, in films, literature and the mass media? How is ideology produced and how does it affect our sense of the world, our world? Rodríguez-Plate is the author of Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity, and several articles on Cuban film and Caribbean literature. She completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of Puerto Rico, did master’s work at Purdue University and earned her doctorate at Emory University.
Recent Courses Taught
Strategies of Resistance in the Hispanic Caribbean
Understanding The Contemporary Caribbean World
Exploring Hispanic Texts
The Power of Looking: Re-imagining the Nation in Hispanic Films
Latin American Film: Nationalism and Identity
Revolutionary Representations: El caso de Cuba
Distinctions
SAGES Program, Case Western University, 2004
Research and Creativity Fund Grant, 2003, 2004
Selected Publications
Books
- Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Articles
- “A Disarticulation of the Gaze: Exploring Modes of Authority and Representation in the Rhetoric of El Monte,” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 223 (Gale Publisher, 2009): 241-257. (Reprinted from Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity, chapter 2).
- “Fictual Factions: On the Emergence of a Documentary Style in Recent Cuban Films.” Screen 49.3 (autumn 2008): 298-315.
- “Un caos lúcido: delimitaciones de la ciudad antillana en Tuyo es el reino de Abilio Estévez.” ["A Lucid Chaos: The City's Boundaries in Abilio Estévez's Yours is the Kingdom"] Revista La Torre X.35 (Enero-Marzo 2005): 121-133.
- “Santería and the Quest for a Postcolonial Identity in Post-Revolutionary Cuban Cinema.” In Representing Religion in World Cinema (New York: Palgrave, 2003): 219-238.
- “The works of Esmeralda Santiago.” In Latino and Latina Writers (Scribner Writers Series) Alan West-Durán, ed. (Michigan: Gale/Scribner, 2003): 985-1002.
- “Driving a Dead Body Through the Nation: Death and Allegory in the Film Guantanamera.” Chasqui, 31.1 (May 2002): 50-61.
College Service
Resident Director HCAYS, 2015-16
Chair of the Hispanic Studies Department, 2012-15
Language Task Force, 2013-14
General Director of 51ÁÔÆæ Academic Year in Spain (HCAYS), 2008-11
Latin American Studies Program, 2008-11
Committee on Academic Policy, 2009-10
Professional Affiliations
Modern Language Association
Latin American Studies Association
Afro-Latin/American Research Association
Appointed to the Faculty
2008Educational Background
Ph.D., Emory University
M.A., Purdue University
B.A., University of Puerto Rico
