Hannah Burdette, PhD

Originally hailing from Tennessee, Hannah Burdette came to Chico State in 2015 from Pennsylvania, where she earned a PhD in Latin American literary and cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh (2013) and taught for two years at Lycoming College as Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish. She also holds PhD certificates from Pitt in Latin American Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (both in Spanish).

Her teaching and research interests include indigenous literature and social movements, postcolonial and subaltern studies, inter-American studies, migration and mobility, and performance. Her passion for travel and the study of languages have taken her to such places as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to study Portuguese; Nahualá, Guatemala, to study Maya K’iche’; and La Paz, Bolivia, to study social movements and Aymara. 

Burdette’s first book manuscript, titled Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala: The Insurgent Poetics of Contemporary Indigenous Literature(opens in new window), is forthcoming with the University of Arizona Press in April 2019. This comparative, inter-American study explores the intersections between Indigenous literature and social movements over the past thirty years through the lens of insurgent poetics. The surge in Indigenous literature and social movements is arguably one of the most significant occurrences of the twenty-first century, and yet it remains understudied.Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala bridges that gap by using the concept of Abiayala as a powerful starting point for rethinking inter-American studies through the lens of Indigenous sovereignty.