© photo by Jeff Day

(2021-2022) Archive of Cuban Socialism (ARCHUS)

Digital Humanities Seed Grant Project

Project Title: Archive of Cuban Socialism (ARCHUS)

Principal Investigator: Maria A. Cabrera Arus

Abstract: The proposed Archive of Cuban Socialism (ARCHCUS) will document and archive the material culture of everyday life in Cuba between 1959 and 1990. It builds on an existing blog, Cuba Material, which will be expanded into a comprehensive, interactive, systematic, and user-friendly platform. Cuba Material has been a multi-year effort at the community and academic level to preserve and make available to scholars and other interested parties information regarding the common goods, fabrics, objects and uniforms, among other material objects, that circulated in Cuba following the 1959 Revolution. Both the objects and meanings (social, political, aesthetic) will be preserved in digital form for documentation and study. The innovative web platform will catalogue objects, male them easily searchable, host digital exhibitions, and provide mechanisms for additional contributions from the community, contextualization, and discussion. This makes it a significant contribution to the study of contemporary material culture as well as to Cuban, Caribbean, Latin American, and state socialist studies.