Overview
Naminata Diabate is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University and a member of the Advisory Board of the Africa Institute of the Global Studies University (GSU) in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Her interdisciplinary work exemplifies why she is affiliated with diverse fields of study and intellectual communities. At Cornell, she is affiliated faculty in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS), affiliated with Visual Studies, and in the graduate fields of Literatures in English; Romance Studies; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies (LGBT); Performing and Media Arts (PMA); and Africana Studies and Research Center (ASRC).
In recent years, Diabate held the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists (Cornell, 2020), which recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarly promise, and dedication to advancing knowledge; the Faculty Fellowship at the Society for the Humanities (Cornell, 2016-17: Skin), and the Ali Mazrui Senior Research Fellowship (Africa Institute, United Arab Emirates).
A scholar of trans-African and black diaspora studies with an emphasis on theories of corporeality, race, blackness, sexuality, and gender, Diabate’s interdisciplinary methodology seeks to redefine how we understand specific forms of agency in the hyper-digitized and hyper-visual era. With linguistic expertise in Malinké, French, English, Nouchi, Spanish, and Latin, she engages multiple cultural productions and oral traditions from Francophone and Anglophone contexts, Afro-Hispanic America, the Caribbean, and the French Antilles. Diabate’s dynamic provocations on defiant disrobing, agency, pleasure/displeasure, (un)freedom, conceptual investigation in Malinké, and the impact of Internet media on queerness have appeared in a monograph, peer-reviewed journals, collections of essays, podcasts, and other public-facing venues. Her monograph, Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa (Duke 2020), invites theoretical and conceptional reflection on how protest nudity functions as a locus of contestation and subjugation. Naked Agency proposes open reading, a reading praxis that tracks manifestations in various genres and platforms of a phenomenon for deeper conceptualization. Simultaneously, the book offers a ten-decade map of instances of uncivil self-exposure in the continent’s political history. The book was awarded the African Studies Association (ASA) 2021 Best Book Prize and the African Literature Association (ALA) 2022 First Book Award.
Additionally, Diabate has published more than a dozen scholarly articles and more than a dozen academic interviews, book reviews, and encyclopedic entries. Her forthcoming academic essays will appear in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; New Visions in African and African Diaspora Studies; The Archive in African Literature 1800-2000; and TransAfrica: The Languages of Postqueerness. Her public-facing contributions have appeared in Voix/Voie de Femmes and L’expression in Côte d’Ivoire, NBC News, BBC’s The Comb, Unladylike, PBS’s Academic Minute, The New Books in Women’s History, Sound Africa, and Writing Africa.
Recently, The Africa Report listed Diabate among the Top 10 African Scholars to Watch in 2024, and Art Africa named her one of the 150 Cultural Advocates alongside eminent figures such as Kara Walker, John Akomfrah, Carrie Mae Weems, Faith Ringgold, Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons, and Zanele Muholi.
Diabate is a member of several editorial boards, including Diacritics: Review of Contemporary Criticism (Johns Hopkins), African Studies Review (Cambridge), Feminist Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Thought (Sage), Journal of African Cultural Studies (Taylor and Francis), Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL, University of Texas Press), and The University of Wisconsin Press Series: Women and Gender in Africa. Currently, she serves on two boards: The Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM-Cornell) and The Institute for African Development (IAD-Cornell). In the past, Diabate was elected to serve on the Modern Language Association (MLA) Executive Committee of the LLC African since 1990 Forum, which she chaired (2016-2020).
Research Focus
By bridging theories of corporeality, gender, sexuality, race, and blackness expressed and negotiated through mediated genres such as oral tradition, literary fiction, filmic, visual art, and social media materials from various cultural, philosophical, and linguistic contexts, I seek to create an integrative approach to understanding complex and layered ontologies. The expansive methodology reflects my commitment to fostering dialogue between disciplines that often operate in isolation.
- Contemporary Narrative and Theory
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Race and Black Studies
- Film and Visual Art
- Social Media Research
Publications
Books in Progress
Pleasure and Displeasure: An Interdisciplinary Investigation
Digital Insurgencies and Bodies
Monograph
Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. Duke University Press, 2020. https://www.dukeupress.edu/naked-agency
Peer-reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
“Nudity and Pleasure." Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 46, May 2020.
“The Forms of Shame in African Literature.” Routledge Handbook of African Literature, ed. Moradewun Adejunmobi and Carli Coetzee. New York: Routledge, 2019. 339-353.
“African Queer African Digital: Reflections on Zanele Muholi’s Films4peace and Other Works.” African Literature Today ALT 36 (2018): 17-37 (Queer Theory in Film & Fiction).
“The Cinematic Language of Naked Protest.” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 11.3 (2017): 248-268
“Genealogies of Desire and Radical Queerness in Frieda Ekotto’s Chuchote Pas Trop and Francophone African Literature.” Research in African Literatures 47. 2 (2016): 46-65.
“Women’s Naked Protest in Africa: Comparative Literature and Its Futures.” Fieldwork in the Humanities, ed. Debra Castillo and Shalini Puri. New York: Palgrave, 2016. 51-71.
“Jean Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes and the Mevoungou: Ambivalence towards the African Woman’s Body.” Women, Gender and Sexualities in Africa, ed. Toyin Falola and Nana Akua Amponsah. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2013. 21-39
“Re-Imagining West African Women’s Sexuality: Jean Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes and the Mevoungou.” Development, Modernism and Modernity in Africa, ed. Augustine Agwuele. New York: Routledge, 2012. 166-181.
“African Women and Missionary Writings: Nineteenth-Century Boloki Women of the Congo in John H. Weeks’ Among Congo Cannibals (1913).” Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review across Disciplines 5. (2007): 44-51.
Literary Interviews
“From Women Loving Women in Africa to Jean Genet and Race: A Conversation with Frieda Ekotto.” Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA) 4. 1. (2010): 181-203.
“From Research in African Literatures (RAL) to Ira Aldridge: An Interview with Bernth Lindfors.” The Ethnic and Third World Literatures Review of Books 8. (Fall 2008): 38-42.
Encyclopedic Entries
"Ousmane Sembene." The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz. Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.
"Yvonne Vera." The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz. Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.
“Côte d’Ivoire Pre-Independence Protest and Liberation.” The International Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution: 1500-Present, ed. Immanuel Ness. London: Blackwell, 2009.
“Côte d’Ivoire Post-Independence Era Protest.” The International Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution: 1500-Present, ed. Immanuel Ness. London: Blackwell, 2009.
Book Reviews
The Amputated Memory by Werewere Liking, The Ethnic and Third World Literatures Review of Books 10. (2010): 67-69.
Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World by Ketu Katrak, The Ethnic and Third World Literatures Review of Books 9. (2009): 92-94.
The Bernth Lindfors Papers at the Harry Ransom Center. The Ethnic and Third World Literatures Review of Books 8. (2008): 42-44.
Postcolonialisms, Edited by Gaura Desai and Supriya Nair. The Ethnic and Third World Literatures Review of Books 7. (2007): 18-20
News
"Cornellians Explore Stories of Sexual Violence Around the World." The Cornell Daily Sun. March 10, 2019. https://cornellsun.com/2019/03/10/cornellians-explore-stories-of-sexual-violence-around-the-world/
In the news
- Diabate named 'African scholar to watch in 2024'
- Naminata Diabate wins ASA book prize for ‘Naked Agency’
- Society for the Humanities 'Afterlives' theme draws record interest
- Cornell faculty featured on ‘The Academic Minute’
- Portland protestor used ‘insurrectionary nakedness’ to manage conflict
- Teaching awards honor Arts & Sciences faculty, graduate students
- ‘Dramas of desperation’: Book examines naked protest in Africa
- Fulbright scholar engages with indigenous communities
- Professor offers talk on history of sexual minority rights in Zimbabwe
- Scholars, artists convene to discuss black girls, women
COML Courses - Fall 2024
- COML 2235 : New Visions in African Cinema
- COML 4190 : Independent Study
- COML 4930 : Senior Essay
- COML 6190 : Independent Study
- COML 6290 : Comparative Literature Proseminar