Kyle Rimkus
Librarian Assistant Professor
University of Miami
Lillian Manzor
Associate Professor of Modern Languages
University of Miami
The Cuban Theater Digital Archive (CTDA) is a unique digital collection of Cuban theater resources that was established by Associate Professor of Modern Languages Lillian Manzor and the University of Miami Libraries in 2004. The University of Miami received a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in early 2009 to determine the importance of the CTDA to the academic community of theater scholars and students and to outline a sustainability plan for the CTDA’s future. The planning grant determined that no other publicly available Web site in the world focuses on the documentation of Cuban theater in Cuba and the Cuban Diaspora to the depth and breadth of the CTDA. In addition, the grant helped confirm that cultural affairs officials in Cuba are willing and often eager to support and contribute robustly to the CTDA, and that the US and Cuban academic communities see considerable value in the CTDA as a teaching and learning platform, especially because it includes space for student contributions. In October 2010, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the University of Miami to rebuild the technical and organizational infrastructure of the CTDA in order to establish the CTDA as the most significant freely available primary source on contemporary Cuban theater in the world. This presentation will provide an overview of the CTDA and an update on its progress.
http://scholar.library.miami.edu/archivoteatral/
Handout (PDF)