Susanne Hackett

Susanne Hackett holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University and an MA in Latin American Studies (2012) from Tulane. Prior to joining the Stone Center, she worked for National Geographic Traveler Magazine for nine years, during which she studied and performed as a singer with an Afro-Cuban folkloric ensemble in Washington, D.C. At Tulane, her research has centered on Cuba, African Diaspora religions, music and dance, and visual language. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “The Yoruba in the Construction of Cuban Revolutionary Nationalism,” examines the role played by Afro-Cuban religious myths called patakíes in the Cuban imaginary, as expressed in literature, film, and popular culture, and argues for a re-centering and privileging of African-derived intellectual and philosophical frameworks within Cuban Revolutionary thought and discourse.

During her time at Tulane, Susanne worked as an assistant to Tulane’s Summer in Cuba program and as a tour guide both in Cuba and at the Whitney Plantation Museum in Louisiana. She also taught Latin American Studies and Spanish language at the undergraduate level.

A chapter of her dissertation was selected as the winner of the inaugural graduate student essay contest of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Latino/a Caucus, and will be published in the journal Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinema as an article titled “A Re-Visionist Her-Story of De Cierta Manera (1974): Reading Yoruba Myth in Sara Gómez’s Revolutionary Classic.”