Manzor, Lillian

Manzor, Lillian

1956-

Dr. Lillian Manzor (b.1956) is the founding member, developer, and editor of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive, a bilingual cultural heritage site that provides inter-related information on writers, directors, texts, productions, festivals, venues and theater companies and digitized photographs, theater programs, and other resources, including video excerpts of theater productions. She is also a scholar, writer, and educator, currently an Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, and curator of Cuban Culture on the Edge.

Dr. Manzor earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and French from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida in 1977. She then earned an M.A. in 1982 and Ph.D. in 1988 in Spanish from the University of Southern California. She worked as a Visiting Instructor of Spanish from 1983 to 1985 at the University of Notre Dame and from 1985 to 1988 at The University of Notre Dame. In 1988, she became an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine before coming to the University of Miami in 1995. At the University of Miami in addition to being Professor, she has acted as Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department Chair, and Director of Degree Programs in Modern Languages. She has also led numerous study abroad courses to Cuba, Chile, Spain, Panamá, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

She has a manuscript in the works called Marginality Beyond Return: US-Cuban Performances and Politics, which is about Cuban theater in the US. Her published works include: El Ciervo Encantado: An Altar in the Mangroves. With Jaime Gómez Triana. New York: Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics Tome Press, 2015; Teatro venezolano del siglo XX. Edited with Alberto Sarraín. La Habana: Editorial Alarcos, Colección Clásicos del Siglo XX, 2008; Teatro cubano actual: Dramaturgia escrita en Estados Unidos. Edited with Alberto Sarraín. La Habana: Ediciones Alarcos, 2005; Latinas on Stage. Edited with Alicia Arrizón, Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 2000, (the first book on Latina performance artists); and finally, Borges/Escher, Cobra/CoBrA: Un encuentro postmoderno. Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1996. She has also published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles in journals such as The Drama Review, Gestos, Ollantay Theater Magazine, Tablas, and Conjunto, book chapters, book reviews, and newspaper articles about U.S.-Cuba relations, collaboration, and travel. She has curated the exhibits “A Theatrical Thunderbolt. Cuban Playwright Virgilio Piñera in his Centenary” for the University of Miami Richter Library Cuban Heritage Collection, which ran August – December 2012, and “Protagonistas de los 60 en el teatro cubano” at University of Miami Richter Library Cuban Heritage Collection, which ran from March – August 2010. She published a bilingual online exhibit Cuban Theater in Miami: 1960-1980 (with Beatriz Rizk.) In 2013, this exhibit won an honorable mention in the Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Awards in the electronic exhibition category of Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).

Dr. Manzor also works on incorporating GIS in digital humanities projects. She has a research project on performing arts spaces in Spanish in Miami called "Sites that Speak" created using the Scalar platform (http://scalar.usc.edu/hc/sites-that-speak/index) learned during the 2012 NEH Summer Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities on Digital Cultural Mapping.

Dr. Manzor has directed and edited the filmed documentation of over a hundred theatrical performances in major cities in Cuba as well as New York and Miami. She has worked as a dramatist, literary and cultural advisor on productions such as Cartas de amor a Stalin, Contigo, pan y cebolla, Huevos, Anna in the Tropics, Sonia se fue, and Gentefrikation.

She has acted as organizer and curator for countless symposiums, colloquium, and conferences, and given invited talks about her research and work. She has won grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cuban Artist Fund, and Puentes Cubanos to support her research and work.

Her current research is in performance studies and digital humanities, which originated from her work on theater and performance from a literary perspective. She works with many theater companies in Miami and in Cuba and is actively involved in developing US-Cuba cultural dialogues through theater and performance. To this end, in 2004, Dr. Manzor launched the Cuban Theater Digital Archive with support of UML and collaboration Cuban National Council for Performing Arts. At this time, the Archive is the only place in the world collecting written texts and live performances by both communities in Cuba and in the U.S. Manzor says that, “Theater offers the chance for experiences that are completely foreign to us to sink in and take root, and with each live performance the audience forms an ephemeral community for a few hours. Theater’s potential to help us understand new perspectives is at the heart of my work on theater and on Cuba. I see theater as a tool for reconciliation.” (2017)

She notes that, “Fractures create unique challenges for scholarship due to separation between the on island and diaspora communities and the politics that get in the way.” Her work is therefore to “study how theater and digital culture and creativity can help in the reconciliation of exile Cuban communities with their counterparts on the island.” An example that Dr. Manzor gives of this kind of connection was the 2001 Miami Monologue Festival. She says that, “Reconciliation happens at the human level, recognizing pain and building trust. To face the past. Theater is a catalyst for reconciliation.” (2017)

Finale

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Biographical note written by Kate Villa, 2020-2021 UGrow Fellow for Manuscripts and Archives Management.

1. UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

2. Lillian Manzor – MLA Commons (hcommons.org)

3. Lillian Manzor | 'Cane Talks | University of Miami

4. Lillian Manzor | THATCamp Performing Arts 2013

5. Arrizón, Alicia, and Lillian Manzor. Latinas on Stage. Berkeley, CA: Third Woman, 2000. Ser. in Chicana/Latina Studies.