[The complete text of Christina Venegas's paper is available.]

The paper charts the development of the Internet in Cuba, a reluctant and necessary step, that is complicated by the historical moment. As Cuba reinserts itself into a global marketplace, it does so when information technologies recreate the way business is done. And while the topic of the Internet is taboo, it is not ignored in the Helms-Burton law which seeks to improve telecommunications with the island in order to increase the potential for change.

This paper examines patterns of comparative media use amongst south Asians in the American south.  It looks at the complex intersection between popular culture (the Hindi film industry), Internet use and traditional folk culture (songs, dances and religious performances).

This presentation is a comparative analysis of the mediation of the first war exhibited on film to the U.S. public (the Spanish-American War), the first true TV war (the Persian Gulf War), and the first World Wide Web War (the ongoing war in Yugoslavia). I explore the possibilities for resistance and negotiation in and through different media within specific historical contexts.