Lectures from the Allen Room and the Wertheim Study: Lorca, Jews, and African-Americans : From Romance to Racism or Simple Misunderstanding?

In conjunction with the Exhibition Back Tomorrow : A Poet in New York/Federico Garcia Lorca 

April 5 - July 21, 2013 - Wachenheim Gallery

Lorca's A Poet in New York is filled with difficult and at times laudatory, at times offensive references to New York's Black and Jewish communities.  Many scholars have shied away from these references, believing that they tarnish Lorca's reputation as a freedom-fighter; others have attempted to interpret them in a favorable and even romantic light.  This talk will focus on the problematics of Lorca's (evolving) attitude toward two ethnic communities which he was fascinated by but did not always understand, and contrast this with some of his earlier images of Muslims in his earlier collaboration with Manuel de Falla, in order to contextualize some of the most uncomfortable aspects of the poet's work.

Sharonah Fredrick, a writer in residence in the Library's Wertheim Study, is currently writing her dissertation in Hispanic Language & Literature at Stony Brook SUNY.  She focuses on the treatment of minorities, in particular Native Americans under the Spanish Empire in the Americas, and on Judeo-Spanish culture in Latin America during the Colonial Period.  Her articles have appeared in the Monterrey Tech Journal of the Humanities, 2002 (Challenging the Gods : an Analysis of Mayan Political Thought) and have been presented at the International Institute for the Literature of Ibero-America at Georgetown University.  She has been a guest lecturer on Hispanic Literature at Arizona State University's Fearless Females series (2012), focusing on gender issues and their uses in literature and mythology.

Click here for other lectures from the Wertheim Study.

Related events under the auspices of Lorca in NY will be offered from April 5 - July 21.