Cultural Studies

Dr. Yanique Hume is a multifaceted scholar, dancer and choreographer with extensive research expertise and specialization across the Americas and the African Diaspora. As a tenured academic from the Caribbean with extensive regional and international experience, she has secured expertise and contribution to the Caribbean intellectual tradition operating from the disciplines of cultural anthropology and performance studies. Dr. Hume’s research experience and teaching areas include: religious and performance cultures of the African diaspora, Caribbean thought, popular culture, migration and diasporic identities. As a multilingual researcher, her fieldwork experience in dance forms and sacred arts are centered in Caribbean and Latin America, especially Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil and Colombia. In applied research, her work has focused on the creative industries and cultural policy; migration and tourism; museological production and management. Dr. Hume is the co-editor of Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora (2013); Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance (2016); and Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean (2018). Dr. Hume is the recipient of grants from the Social Science Research Council, the International Development Research Centre, Ford Foundation and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. As a professional dancer and choreographer, she has worked with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, L’Acadco United Caribbean Dance Force, and Danza Caribe of Cuba. Her choreography draws on over 25 years of training in Afro-Caribbean dance with specializations in Haitian, Jamaican and Cuban movement vocabularies. Dr. Hume brings additional competencies in dance and theatre production management; grant writing, budget analysis, project/program evaluation and contingency planning; directing international cultural exchange projects across different linguistic territories within the Caribbean and Latin America. She is proficient in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Kreyol and Jamaican Patwa. 

Research Interests

Caribbean Cultural Production and Identity Politics, Haitian Folkloric Performances in Contemprary Cuba, African Diasporic Religious Cultures and Spiritualities; Caribbean Mortuary Complex, Migration, Diaspora and Transnational Identities,  Diasporic Tourism, Cultural Performance and Popular Culture, Cuban Cultural Policy,
 

Current Research Projects

The Aesthetics of Death – Mortuary Arts of the Black Atlantic.

Research project explores the aesthetic and performative dimensions of the Caribbean and broader Afro-Atlantic mortuary complex.
 
Commissioned CARICOM consultancy on the creative industries: “Regional Strategic Plan for Cultural and Entertainment Services/Cultural Industries in CARICOM and CARIFORUM States” – Focus on preparation of country profiles, financial incentive regime for member states and in particular Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Conducted Stakeholder meetings on the state of the creative/cultural sectors in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (March to October 2016)