Naminata Diabate is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She is a core faculty member in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS) and is affiliated with the Department of Literatures in English; Romance Studies; the Africana Studies and Research Center (ASRC); Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies (LGBT); Performing and Media Arts (PMA); and Visual Studies. Diabate holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, with dual concentrations in African Diaspora Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, from the University of Texas at Austin (2011).
A scholar of African and African diaspora studies, sexuality and gender studies, neoliberalism, and biopolitics, Diabate has linguistic expertise in Malinké, French, English, Nouchi, Spanish, and Latin. Her research examines forms of embodied agency in the neoliberal present across global Africa. She engages with a range of materials, including twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels, digital and social media, visual art, film, journalism, and oral traditions from Africa, Black America, Afro-Hispanic America, and the French Antilles.
As a 2021 recipient of the Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellowship in Global African Studies at The Africa Institute, Diabate worked on two monograph projects: “The Problem of Pleasure in Global Africa” and “Digital Insurgencies and Bodily Domains.” She currently serves on The Africa Institute’s Advisory Board.
Her scholarship on defiant disrobing, erotic pleasure, and the influence of internet media on queerness has appeared in her book Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020), as well as in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections. These include African Studies Review, Journal of the African Literature Association, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Research in African Literatures, African Literature Today, Interventions, Routledge Handbook of African Literature, and Fieldwork in the Humanities. Naked Agency received the African Studies Association’s 2021 Best Book Prize and the African Literature Association’s 2022 First Book Award.
In addition to her academic scholarship, Diabate contributes to newspapers, women’s magazines, and podcasts. Her work has been featured by NBC News and on BBC’s The Comb, PBS’s Academic Minute, the New Books in Women’s History podcast, and the South African podcast series Sound Africa. She has also written for the women’s magazine Voix/Voie de Femme in Côte d’Ivoire.
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