The Quality of Home Runs: Cuban baseball book to debut in February

Book Launch and seminar,
Dr. Thomas F. Carter,
University of Brighton

6:30 p.m.
Thursday 5 February, 2009
Henry Thomas Room,
Tower Building
London Metropolitan University
London N7 8DB

In the parks, bars, and cafes as well as homes, schools, and stadiums across Cuba, Cubans argue about baseball. These discussions are not just about baseball but what it means to be Cuban.

In this seminar, Thomas Carter introduces his new book on how baseball has played a significant role since the nineteenth century in Cuban society and in the formation of Cuban national identity and how it continues to resonate with everyday life and politics to this day.

Its associations with nation building, independence, revolution and a myriad of other values make Cubans what they are. It serves as a form of self-expression and a means for distinguishing themselves from others while providing a forum for negotiating relationships between citizen and state in the discourse of nationalism.

This evening’s seminar will provide an overview of the historical trajectories of baseball in Cuba and its inherently Cuban values associated with the playing and watching of the sport.

Dr. Thomas F. Carter is a cultural anthropologist who earned his doctorate in anthropology in the desert southwest of the United States at the University of New Mexico. He has taught at several institutions in the US and UK and is currently Senior Lecturer at the Chelsea School in the University of Brighton. He is part of the first generation of anthropologists to conduct detailed ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba since the 1959 Revolution and the only one that studies interrelationships between nationalism, cultural identity and Cuban baseball. His ethnographic research in Havana (30 months) and Belfast (30 months) has made him a leading expert on the interplay of sport, identity politics, transnational migration, and spectacles at the local, national, international levels.

Wine will be served after this seminar and Dr. Carter will be available to sign copies of his book

Entrance to this seminar is free but please register your intention to attend by email: admin@cubastudies.org