Madeline Cámara is professor of Hispano-American literature in the World Language Education Department of the University of South Florida in Tampa. She received degrees from the University of Havana and the Colegio de México and a PhD from the State University of New York in Stony Brook. The recipient of a Fullbright Fellowship in 2001, Dr. Cámara is the author of several books La letra rebelde: estudios de escritoras cubanas (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2002). In her presentation, Dr. Cámara explores the concept of ""poetic consciousness"" that the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano proposes to characterize the way in which Lydia Cabrera's writing approaches the African roots of Cuban culture. Cámara maintains that research and poetry are inseperable in the work of Lydia Cabrera and proposes that Cabrera can also be studied as a pioneer of postmodern ethnography. Lecture was presented as part of the Cuban Heritage Collection Scholars Series.