简介

José F. Buscaglia is a philosopher, scholar, university administrator, public intellectual and consultant. His work is deeply trans-disciplinary, dealing primarily with the history of ideas, ideologies and aesthetics, public space and the body, iconography and the imaginary in the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, the Atlantic World and Europe. His first book, Undoing Empire, Race, and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean, coins the neologism of “mulataje” as a practice of thinking and being that, since the 16th Century, has continuously attempted to undo the calculations of racialism. It also reclaims the term “Usonian” to refer to the peoples, national ideology and neo-imperial tradition of the United States of America. His most recent work is a critical edition of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora’s 1690 account of piracy and captivity Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez. Following in the tradition of Caribbean discourse, the substantive prologue, extensive critical essay and copious notes (over 600) to the 1690 edition, are a treatise on the multi-disciplinary possibilities of research and critical thinking across the humanities, the arts, architecture, geography, navigation, religion, politics and the social sciences. Since the start of his academic career Buscaglia has been an ardent advocate of international education and a pioneer in study abroad programs by Usonian institutions in Cuba. From 2001 to 2007 he was the first professor from a university in the U.S., since the revolution of 1959, to teach a regularly scheduled yearly seminar (Caribbean Thought) at the University of Havana.