Patricia Barber is a jazz composer, pianist, and vocalist who works out of Chicago, Illinois. She has performed throughout the world and had her first Carnegie Hall concert in July, 2002. Her latest CD, Verse, her seventh, is her first album made entirely of her own compositions.
Thomas Bishop is a Professor of French and Comparative Literatures at NYU and Chair of the Center for French Civilization and Culture. Among his selected works are From the Left Bank: Reflections on the Modern French Theatre and Novel; Le Passeur d'océan: Carnets d'un ami américain; L'Avant Garde Théâtrale: French Theater Since 1950. He has received grants from the French Government, the French-American Foundation, and the Florence Gould Foundation, as well as an OBIE award and the Grand Prix de l'Académie Française.
Alicia Borinsky is a literary scholar, fiction writer and poet. She has published numerous books in Spanish and in English, in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. She received the Latino Literature Prize for Fiction in 1996. Among her books are: Mean Woman, La pareja desmontable, Sueños del seductor abandonado and Cine continuado. She is presently the Director of Boston University Program in Latin American Studies.
Trisha Brown is one America’s foremost dance choreographers. Since 1979, she has collaborated in large-scale theatrical productions. Her work has been performed all over the world. Her latest major piece was El Trilogy, a three-part, 90-minute show, performed in July 2001 at The Lincoln Center Festival, in New York City.
Nicolas Calas is a major contributor in the diffusion and evolution of the avant-garde, with essays on literature, politics, art and cinema. An active member of the French surrealist group since 1937, he settled in Paris and published his first book of essays as result of encouragement of André Breton. His arrival to New York in 1940 matters in the surrealism dissemination in the States.
Eldridge Cleaver was one of the founders of the militant group the Black Panthers in 1966. He wrote Soul On Ice in 1968, based on essays he had wrote in prison. He was considered a spokesman for Black Power. He lived exiled in Paris and Algeria after being wounded in a Panther shootout with Oakland police. Years later, in 1975, he returned to America a born-again Christian, embraced conservative political causes and even ran for political office as a Republican. He also suffered well-publicized struggles with drug addiction in the years before his 1998 death.
Julio Cortázar is one of the most widely celebrated Argentinean writers. Settled in Paris since 1981 until his death in 1984. His novels Rayuela (Hopscotch) and Around the Day in Eighty Worlds were his major work to be translated into English as well as they were widely praised and won Cortázar an international acclaim. He won the Prix Médicis prize for Libro de Manuel. After that he devoted the rest of the time to his writing and other loves such as the jazz trumpet.
Pedro Cuperman teaches Latin American Literature and Semiotics at Syracuse University, where he is Advisor of the Graduate Spanish Program. Among his works are Tango, coauthored with Nancy Graves, Go East by Going West and American Baroque. His Diario de Viaje was released by Scholastic in 1996.
Mario Diament is an Argentine-born journalist and playwright. He is also Associate Professor of Journalism at Florida International University and a member of the National Academy of Journalism of Argentina. He is the author of several award-winning plays that have been produced in Argentina and throughout Latin America, Europe, Israel and U.S. He currently writes a weekly column for the Argentine daily La Nación.
Vicente Fatone was considered one of the most prominent philosophers of his time. A Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, he is the author of Misticismo épico (1928) Introducción al existencialismo (1953), El hombre y Dios (1955), Ensayos sobre hinduismo y budismo (1972) and El budismo “nihilista” y otros ensayos (1972).
Christine Fawcett performs regularly with the Syracuse Opera Company and is a frequent soloist in a variety of events throughout the City of Syracuse, among others, as Cantor-Soloist-Music Director at one of the area’s largest churches. She also is the executive manager of the Syracuse International Film & Video Festival.
Carlos Fuentes is one Mexico’s most celebrated novelists and critics. Fifteen of his novels have been published in the United States. In 1978 he received the Rómulo Gallegos Award in Venezuela and in 1984, he was honored with the National Prize in Literature in Mexico. Some years later he received the most prestigious award conferred by King Juan Carlos of Spain, the Miguel Cervantes Award.
Haile Gerima is an independent filmmaker. He was born in Ethiopia and presently teaches film at Howard University. Among his notable films are Bush Mama, Ashes and Embers and Sankofa.
Gloria J. Gibson teaches film in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Indiana University. She is also Assistant Director of the Black Film Center / Archive and heads the Archives of Traditional Music.
Philip Glass created a large collection of new music for his performing group, The Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company, which he co-founded. His film score for Stephen Daldry's The Hours won the Golden Globe, a Grammy, and an Academy Award nomination, along with winning a BAFTA in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Mary Karr is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry (2005). She is the author of two best-selling memoirs: The Liars Club and Cherry, and three poetry collections, most recently, Sinners Welcome. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.
Mercedes López-Baralt, a prominent Latin American anthropologist, historian, writer and literary critic. A specialist in Latin-American colonial literature and semiotics, she has written extensively about the native mythologies of the Antilles. She has been visiting professor at Cornell University and a founding member of The Latin American Indian Literatures Association. Currently she teaches at The Hispanic Studies Department of University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras.
Floyd Merrell is a Professor of Latin American literature and culture, and semiotics theory, in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Purdue University. He is a visiting professor at the Pontíficia Universidade de São Paulo and the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil). Author of more than fifteen books, most of them include Sobre Las Culturas y Civilizaciones Latinoamericanas (On Latin American Cultures and Civilizations), as well as dozens of articles.
Julio Ortega, natively from Peru, is an accomplished scholar, poet, playwright, and novelist, with fifteen books as well as several critical editions to his credit. In 1989, Professor Ortega joined Brown's Department of Hispanic Studies. He has also been a visiting professor abroad, including Simon Bolivar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge (1995-96) and Catedra de Estudios Avanzados at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Summer 1995).
Raimon Panikkar is a world renowned philosopher and theologian. Among his many books are Invisible Harmony, Cosmotheandric Experience, and Unknown Pilgrims. He lives in Tavertet (Catalunya), Spain, and regularly lectures around the world and in India.
Elena Poniatowska is a Journalist and writer, settled in Mexico since 1942. As an Emeritus creator she became a member to the National System of Artistic. She has written four novels, a dozen of essays and four books of interviews. She has been honored with Alfaguara prize for Best Novel (2001), Mazatlán Prize of Literature, (1992), Manuel Buendía Prize (1987), Xavier Villaurrutia Prize (1970) Premio Mazatlán (1970) and the first woman to receive the National Prize of Journalism (1978).
Manuel Puig is best known for his novel Kiss of the Spider Woman, which has been adapted as a movie and a Broadway musical, Manuel Puig (1932-1990) also write Blood of Requited Love and Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages, as well as Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Heartbreaker Tango, and The Buenos Aires affair.
José Sanjinés is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Coastal Carolina University. He has authored poetry, fiction, and children’s books and Paseos en el horizonte, a book on the work of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. His numerous articles appear in journals such as Semiotica, Sign System Studies, The American Journal of Semiotics, The Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis and Point of Contact.
Severo Sarduy is considered as one of the most important writers of the contemporary Hispanic view. As a poet, journalist, narrator and art and literature critic won the Médecis prize for his novel Cobra, which has been translated to several languages. Born in Cuba, he traveled to Europe after the Cuban revolution to complete his studies in Art History at the School of Louvre and La Sorbonne. After his death in Paris, 1993, his last creation Pájaros de la playa was published.
Owen Shapiro is an independent filmmaker, professor and director of the film program at Syracuse University and artistic director of the Syracuse International Fillm & Video Festival. Among his films are the award winning Prisoners of Freedom, Any Many Happy Returns, and Thomas Szasz and The Myth of Mental Illness. He also has written extensively on film theory and criticism.
Dina Sherzer (MA, PhD University of Pennsylvania), Director France-University of Texas Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies has written five books and a wide selection of articles, some of them with collaboration of Joel Sherzer.
Joel Sherzer (MA, PhD University of Pennsylvania), professor of Anthropology and linguistics at University of Texas, Director of The Achieve of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) is the author of more than 10 books and dozens of articles related to native discourse of the Indians in Latin America, specifically the Kuna culture from San Blas, Panamá.
Bruce Smith is the author of several books of poems, among others, The Other Lover, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (2001) and a finalist for the National Book Award. He has twice been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Arts. Formerly a professional football and basketball player, he is currently a Professor of English at Syracuse University.
W.D. Snodgrass winner of The Hudson Review Fellowship in Poetry, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Poetry Prize, a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and the National Book Award, has had a profound effect on many of his contemporaries such as Robert Lowell. He divided the critics; essentially with his most controversial book The Führer Bunker, in which he not only pitted critics against each other, but a critic against himself. After a distinguished academic career he retired in 1994 and now dedicates himself full-time to his writing.
Robert Stam is a Professor in Cinema Studies at New York University. His works include Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film; Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, with Ella Shohat; and Key Terms in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-structuralism and Beyond, with Bob Burgoyne and Sandy Flitterman.
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California. Among her books are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen’s God Wife, and two books for children: The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat. Her books have been translated into twenty languages.
Wayne Wang was born in Hong Kong. He is the first Chinese American filmmaker to produce a body of significant work with the dominant commercial feature film scene of Hollywood. His works include Chan is Missing, Eat a Bowl of Tea, The Joy Luck Club and Smoke.
Andrew Waggoner is a composer and past Director of the School of Music at Syracuse University. Several of his compositions have been recorded, including Train and a Song … (Strophic Variations For String Quartet.)
Peter Wollen wrote among other books, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema and Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on 20th Century Culture. Among his films are Riddles of the Sphinx made in collaboration with Laura Mulvey. He also coauthored the script of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. He teaches film at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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