Odette Casamayor Cisneros, assistant professor of Spanish/Puerto Rican & Latino Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, won the 2009 Literary Essay Prize “José Juan Arrom” from the Union of Cuban Writers (Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba) in Havana, Cuba, for the article “Guanajerías post-soviéticas: Apuntes ético-estéticos en torno al humor en la narrative de Ena Lucía Portela.” The article is related to her current book project, which examines, through the lens of literary production, the Cuban experience of chaos and abandonment that emerged with the collapse of the Socialist Bloc in 1989.