History professor Blair Woodard will give a presentation Thursday evening entitled “An Iconography of Enemies: Catholics, Communists, and US-Cuban Relations.” The lecture will focus on US-Cuba relations and the presence of the Catholic Church and religious imagery in that relationship, primarily from 1959 to the present.
Woodard noted that Cuba and the United States have long had a close but also contested relationship, one that he has studied closely, specifically through the lens of visual culture. The imagery of this era as a whole is interesting, Woodard said, but there’s a way to observe it from a Catholic perspective that brings it another interesting facet.
Cuba has also been in the news in the past few years, Woodard said, from the normalization of relations with the island during the Obama Administration, to the Trump Administration’s aim to change that normalization, to mysterious recent attacks at the American Embassy in Havana. Woodard encourages anybody who’s interested in politics and current events or would like to know more about the island to attend.
“I just got back from the island in the summer, so I can answer questions beyond this talk in terms of what’s going on in Cuba,” Woodard said. “I think it should be a fun talk. There’ll be some interesting stories, and you’ll see some interesting pictures.”
The presentation will be at 7:15 p.m. on Oct. 5 in Franz Hall 120.
