Susana Reisz was born in Argentina. She studied Classics and Hispanic Literatures at the University of Buenos Aires (M.A. or 'Licenciatura", 1967), and Classics and Romance Languages  at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) , where she received her Ph.D. in 1973. She has lived and worked in four countries: her native Argentina, Germany, Peru and the United States of America.

She taught for thirteen years at the Catholic University of Lima, Peru, before moving to New Hampshire, to teach at Dartmouth College as a Visiting Professor (1989-1990). In 1990 she was appointed  Full Professor at Lehman College. In 1991 she joined the faculty of the Ph. D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures of The Graduate Center of CUNY, where she also served as Deputy Executive Officer from 1993 to  2006. While living in Peru she was invited to teach  a seminar on ancient literary theory at the UNAM,  México D.F. (1980), and a seminar on contemporary literary theory at The Graduate Center of CUNY  (1988).  She has also held visiting positions in universities of Latin America (Buenos Aires, La Plata, Monterrey) and Europe (Mannheim, Bergen, Lerida).

Professor Reisz teaches courses on literary theory, contemporary Spanish American literature and women's writings in the Hispanic world, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She has also taught introductory courses in the humanities in the Bilingual Program of Lehman College.

Her theoretical and critical work ranges from Greek tragedy  and the origins of literary theory to  present debates on the  humanities . Her research has focused on classical and modern poetics,   theories of literature,  women's writings and feminist theory,  contemporary Latin American literatures (with an emphasis on poetry), and  minor/minority literatures in the Hispanic world.

She has published widely on all the above mentioned topics. Her best-known works are her two books on literary theory. The first of them, Teoría literaria. Una propuesta  (Lima, Fondo Editorial de la PUCP),  was published in 1986. A second edition appeared in 1987, and a third  in 1989.  Her second book on the subject, Teoría y análisis del texto literario, was published  by Hachette (Buenos Aires)  in 1989.

Her two other books are Poetische Äquivalenzen. Grundverfahren dichterischer Gestaltung bei Catull  (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1977), based on her Ph. D. thesis on Catullus' poetry,  and Voces sexuadas. Género y poesía en Hispanoamérica (Lérida: Asociación Española de Estudios Literarios Hispanoamericanos, 1996), a study of contemporary Spanish American women poets.

Besides these four books, she has contributed chapters to eleven books and has written  more than seventy articles. Since her arrival to the United States, she has  lecture at many universities  in North America, South America and Europe.

Her publications of the last fifteen years show a sustained interest in the interrelated fields of theory of poetry, poetics, contemporary Spanish American women's poetry, and feminist theory. Her consistent dedication to these studies has earned her the Argentinian Konex  Award in the Humanities (ÒPremio Konex de HumanidadesÓ, 1996) and has given her the opportunity to address professional audiences in Europe and America as an expert in these areas.

She is currently preparing a book devoted to a group of Peruvian women poets whose contributions subverted and expanded the canon of the national literature in the last three decades –a period of dramatic changes in Peru.  This is a first step toward a far-reaching and ambitious goal: the mapping of women's poetry in  contemporary Spanish American literature.

Susana Reisz has served  as  board member of the following publications: Filología, (Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Tropelías.  Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada, (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain), Arrabal.  Revista de la  Asociación Española de Estudios Literarios Hispanoamericanos (Lérida, Spain), Hueso Húmero.  Revista de Artes y Letras  (Lima, Perú), ConNotas. Revista de Teoría y Crítica Literarias (Universidad de Sonora, Sonora, México), Ciberletras, and Hostos Review/Revista Hostosiana.