Displacements of Cubanidad: Drag, Pageantry, and Diasporic Representation -A Huerta Center Brown Bag presentation with Jennifer Gottlieb

In this talk, Jennifer interrogates how Cuban identity is performed, disciplined, and made legible within globalized media systems that simultaneously celebrate diversity and constrain it through drag and beauty pageantry. Rather than treating Cubanidad as a stable or unified identity, Cubanidad is discussed as a mobile and contested formation shaped by histories of economic crisis, migration, racial inequality, and gendered labor. Overall, Jennifer examines how Cuban identity circulates, fractures, and is reconstituted through contemporary transnational performance cultures.

Jennifer Gottlieb is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at UC-Santa Cruz and a Huerta Center Graduate Student Research Awardee (2025-26).