As always, host Bob Barrett selects an Academic Minute to air during The Best of Our Knowledge.
Each week this program examines some of the issues unique to college campuses, looks at the latest research, and invites commentary from experts and administrators from all levels of education.
For this week‘s edition (#1343), Bob has selected Devyn Spence Benson’s segment. An assistant professor in the department of history at Louisiana State University, Dr. Spence Benson’s segment discusses President Obama’s visit to Cuba and its effect on AfroCubans.
Devyn Spence Benson is an assistant professor of history and African & African American Studies at Louisiana State University. Benson received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in the field of Latin American History, where her research focused on racial politics during the first three years of the Cuban revolution. She has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Williams College and now LSU. She is the author of published articles and reviews in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Transnational American Studies, Journal of Cuban Studies and PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin / American Research Association. Benson’s work has been supported by the Doris G. Quinn, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS), and Gaius Charles Bolin dissertation fellowships. She has also held residencies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and the WEB DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Benson’s newest book, Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution(UNC press, 2016) is based on over 18 months of field research in Cuba where she has traveled annually since 2003. You can follow her on Twitter @bensondevyn.
