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Caribbean Seminar Series - The Difference a Cigar Can Make: Cuba and the Global Habano

26 February 2025, 5:30 pm–7:00 pm

Book cover with text  "Tobacco Counterpoints".

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Sudershana Dave

THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT

Abstract: Tobacco’s importance to Cuba, especially that of its famed luxury hand-rolled Havana cigar, has long been far-reaching, and today, in an era when tobacco is a pariah commodity and Cuba is a US pariah state, El Habano remains coveted, copied, and counterfeited the world over. In this talk, Professor Stubbs discusses key themes spanning the late eighteenth century to the present from her book Tobacco Counterpoints: Cuba and the Global Habano (Amaurea Press, 2024): Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican tobacco under the long shadow of monopoly; circuits of migration and knowledge across the Iberian Atlantic; and global transimperial connections.

Biography: Jean Stubbs is Professor Emerita of London Metropolitan University, where she directed the Caribbean Studies Centre (2002-2009). She served as Chair of the UK Society for Caribbean Studies (1992-1994) and the Caribbean Studies Association (2001-2003), and is a member of the Cuban Academy of History. She has published widely on tobacco, class, race, and gender, including an expanded edition of her early work Tobacco on the Periphery (Amaurea Press, 2023) and Tobacco Counterpoints (Amaurea, 2024); she co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History (OUP, 2024) and Tobacco in Global Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), and is currently researching contemporary Cuban migration.

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