Biography
Reynaldo Lastre was born in Cuba, where he built a career as a film critic and editor. He worked at the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) and the International School of Film and Television (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Literatures, Cultures, and Languages from the University of Connecticut.
His research focuses on Latin American and Caribbean film and visual culture, Cuban cultural studies, environmental humanities, and the cultural history of science and technology. He is currently completing two book projects. The first, Nuclear Technology and Cultural Production in Cuba, examines how the aesthetics of nuclear modernity shaped revolutionary Cuban culture from 1959 to the present. Drawing on literature, visual art, and film, it explores how nuclear infrastructure, disaster imaginaries, and Cold War international alliances transformed Cuban subjectivity, collective memory, and environmental consciousness.
His second book project examines how contemporary film and visual media from the Hispanic Caribbean negotiate the tension between the region's global construction as a tropical paradise and its lived realities of environmental crisis, colonial legacies, and political violence. Through case studies from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, the book explores how visual culture represents climate disasters, ecological degradation, and more-than-human worlds while interrogating the intersections of environmental justice, imperial power, and colonial memory.
He serves as a Book Review Editor for the Latin American Literary Review and has been appointed to the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association's Cuban and Cuban Diasporic Forum for the 2027–2032 term.
Publications
Books
- Memory in Contemporary Cuban Film and Digital Media. Entangled Temporalities, co-editor, University Press of Florida, 2026.
- Isla diseminada. Ensayos sobre Cuba, co-editor, Hypermedia Ediciones, 2022.
Articles (Peer-reviewers)
- “Las camas solas” and “Nos quedamos”: Hurricanes and the Social Production of Disaster in Cuban Documentary Films”, Hispanic Studies Review, Forthcoming.
- “Política, naturaleza y disrupción: Toxicidad en Abrigo nuclear (Roberto Pires, Brasil 1981) y Corazón Azul (Miguel Coyula, Cuba 2021)”. INTI. Revista de Literatura Hispánica y Trasatlántica 101-102, 2025, pp.31-45.
- “Entre La Habana revolucionaria y La Habana distópica. Representaciones de la ciudad en el cine cubano,” Revista Recial, 14, 2023, pp.131-146.
- “Diálogos con la ciencia y viaje al origen en Big Bang, de Severo Sarduy,” INTI. Revista de Literatura Hispánica y Trasatlántica 91-92, 2020, pp.142-155.
Book chapters
- “Specters, Hauntology, and Avatars in Independent Cuban Cinema,” Memory and the Revolution in Twenty-first-century Cuban Cinema and Digital Media. Entangled Temporalities, University of Florida Press, 2026.
- “Del diluvio universal a las óperas espaciales. Raza, género y locura en dos animados cubanos de los años sesenta,” Isla Diseminada. Ensayos sobre Cuba. Hypermedia Ediciones, 2022.