The United States excels at making enemies but, arguably, is not so good at making up with them. In this course, we'll take Cuba as a case study in how and why the American government goes about forging an enemy relationship and—as you’ve probably heard on the news—sometimes decides to patch things up. This summer, the U.S. and Cuba reopened embassies in each other’s capitals. But America’s complicated relationship with Cuba goes back much further than that. Across three centuries, American leaders have eyed Cuba for annexation, occupied it, invaded it, dominated its sugar industry, and—most recently—imposed economic sanctions that by most objective standards utterly failed in their stated goals. We'll look at media representations of Cuba across time, especially in photography, film and art, to discuss what that long history has to tell us about present efforts to negotiate a thaw in relations between the two countries. Drawing on those insights, we'll critically analyze the news of ongoing talks between the two countries as they unfold, and ask whether the cultural lens used to view "the other," on both sides of the Florida Straits, is really changing. We'll also look at a smattering of new research about everyday life under post-Soviet socialism on the island and ask how it might inform a more reasonable approach to Cuba policy. Finally, we’ll develop, as a joint class project, a model framework for U.S.-Cuba relations moving forward.