Dara Ellen Goldman

Dara E. Goldman is an Associate Professor of Spanish, specializing in contemporary Caribbean and Latin American literatures and cultures, gender and sexualities studies and cultural studies. She is the author of Out of Bounds: Islands and the Demarcation of Identity in the Hispanic Caribbean (Bucknell Univ. Press, 2008) and is currently completing a project on how recent Cuban cultural production challenges dominant depictions of the island as a land frozen in time, available for touristic consumption, or as a model of anti-imperial resilience. The book analyzes literature, film, and music that challenges such depictions, unearthing the conditions they mask. She has also published articles on how Caribbean identities are represented in contemporary literature and film, on gender in Caribbean music, and on Jewish cultural production. Professor Goldman has served as Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies and currently chairs the Global Diaspora and Migration Initiative. She also holds appointments as Affiliate Faculty in several camps units, including the Comparative and World Literatures, Center for Global Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, Latina/Latino Studies and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory.

• Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, Domincan Republic, Puerto Rico)
• Latin America
• U.S. Caribbean/Latino

My work examines the persistent role of the national in a transnational and globalized world. As a result, I examine forms of literary and cultural expression that engage both the local and the translocal. My current scholarship focuses on topics such as Latin American detective fiction, music and mobility, gender in reggaetón, Jewish cultural production in Cuba, and the evolving role of "diaspora" and diasporic studies in contemporary cultural studies.