Admission to all events is free of charge, donations are welcome.

This year the American Experience goes to the Caribbean, as Professor Ada Ferrer presents a series of lectures exploring five hundred years of complex relations between Cuba and the United States.  As a Cuban American herself, Professor Ferrer presents a vivid and deeply personal account of Cuban history that focuses on the experiences of the island’s inhabitants, not just on the geopolitical competition between major powers that have for centuries shaped its fate.  In the eighteenth and nineteenth century these relations were rooted in sugar and slavery. In the twentieth century they were defined by Cuban efforts to shake off U.S. political domination and to claim independence from big powers — struggles that began long before Fidel Castro’s rise to power.

Professor Ferrer, born in Cuba between the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, has been traveling to and conducting research in Cuba since 1990, occasionally accompanied by her husband and daughters.  Her essay “My Brother’s Keeper,” published by The New Yorker, tells the story of her and her family’s relationship with the Cuban Revolution. 

Her Bay View lectures will be based on her book Cuba: An American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2022.  She will also devote time to discussing Haiti. Professor Ferrer is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University.