Recent graduate Alexander Hardan (PhD ‘26, Musicology & Ethnomusicology) was awarded the 2026 Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Dissertation Prize. Hardan’s dissertation, Listening for Sovietization in Cold War Cuba, explores the musical exchange between the USSR and Cuba following the Cuban Revolution, examining how this transnational dialogue found expression through musical performance. The dissertation argues that the “Russian School” of musical performance was instrumentalized as a discursive, affective, and institutional tool in replicating ideas of “Soviet greatness” in revolutionary Cuba, becoming an indexical conduit for the reinvention of national identity.