Maile Speakman

Maile Speakman studies questions of circulation, digital culture, intellectual history, and race and empire in the Americas. Her dissertation project examines an alternative media network in Cuba called “el paquete semanal” and considers how telecommunications infrastructure and U.S. imperialism shape the politics of internet access in Cuba. Before pursuing a PhD in American Studies at Yale, Maile received an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University. Her M.A. thesis, “Performance Cubano: Reading Queer Theory in Havana,” used ethnographic methods to document how Cuban intellectuals circulated U.S. queer theory in the early 2000s. In 2007, Maile studied at Havana’s Universidad de las Artes (ISA) as an exchange student and from 2011-2013 she worked as a language instructor for the Ministry of Education of Spain. Currently, Maile co-coordinates Yale’s Latin American Studies Working Group and is the editorial assistant for the journal Social Text.