Presented by Mónica B. Ocasio Vega, Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin

Natalie Catasús

Comparative Literature, Emory University

Natalie Catasús is a Ph.D. candidate in Emory University’s Comparative Literature Department, where she specializes in Caribbean literature and visual culture with an emphasis on Cuba and its diaspora. She holds an M.A. in visual and critical studies and an M.F.A. in writing from California College of the Arts and received her B.A. in literature and Spanish from New College of Florida. Her current research studies issues, such as migrant death at sea and Cuban exceptionalism, in order to understand how Caribbean subjects negotiate needs for difference and movement with desires for recognition and belonging. Read more »

Mónica B. Ocasio Vega

Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin

 

Mónica B. Ocasio Vega is a Ph.D. candidate in Iberian and Latin American Literatures and Cultures at the University of Texas at Austin, where she researches the culinary cultures of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico as imaginaries for a specific, sensible life. Her research focuses on the concept of sabor and how it allows us to understand alternative modes of being and doing in the Caribbean. She is a Puerto Rican educator and scholar who is committed to broadening the conversation about food and racial justice in colonial and neocolonial settings. Read more »