Visiting Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
Naminata Diabate is Visiting Associate Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of Humanities at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University. She is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University, with interdisciplinary affiliations spanning gender studies, literature, Africana studies, media, performance, and visual studies.
A scholar of African and African diaspora studies, Diabate’s research and teaching engage comparative literature, biopolitics, theories of embodiment and agency, gender studies, visual culture, and digital media. Her work draws on cultural production and oral traditions from Francophone and Anglophone Africa, Afro-Hispanic America, the Caribbean, and the French Antilles. Her linguistic expertise includes Malinké, French, English, Nouchi, Spanish, and Latin.
Diabate has a longstanding association with The Africa Institute, having previously served as the Ali A. Mazrui Senior Research Fellow from 2021 to 2023. Her other distinctions include Cornell University’s Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists and a Faculty Fellowship at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities. She has also contributed to several academic editorial and institutional boards.
Her monograph, Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020), received the African Studies Association’s 2021 Best Book Prize and the African Literature Association’s 2022 First Book Award. In 2024, The Africa Report named her among its Top 10 African Scholars to Watch, while Art Africa recognized her among 150 Cultural Advocates.
Diabate holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, with concentrations in African Diaspora Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies.
Research
Diabate’s research spans African and African diaspora studies, comparative literature, theories of embodiment and agency, gender studies, race and Black studies, film and visual art, oral traditions, and digital media. Her interdisciplinary approach examines how identity, power, freedom, and cultural expression are negotiated across literary, visual, performative, and online forms.
Publications
- Diabate, Naminata. Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Coda: Some Reflections on Naked Agency, Visual Dissemination, and the Search for Humans.” In Black Feminist Theories: Transnational Approaches, edited by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Carole Boyce Davies, Janell Hobson, Angelique V. Nixon, and Christen A. Smith, 316. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Naked Agency, Agency Brokers, and the Ethics of Responsibility: A Response.” Safundi (2026): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2026.2668184.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Aestheticizing and Archiving the Women’s War of 1929 and the 1949 Women’s March on the Grand-Bassam Prison.” In African Literature in Transition, Volume 1: The Archive of African Literature, 1800–2000, edited by James Ogude and Neil ten Kortenaar, 182–98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009662376.015.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Nude Protests in Africa, the Digital, and the Human.” In Not All Travellers Walk Roads: Of Humanity as Practice: Reader of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, 166–75. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 2025.
- Diabate, Naminata. “(Non)Genealogical Radical Queerness: On a Schizophrenic Reading of Frieda Ekotto’s Chuchote pas trop.” In Transafrica: The Languages of Postqueerness, edited by Chantal Zabus and Chris Dunton, 113–35. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.
- Ajibade, Mayowa, and Naminata Diabate. “Being Granular about Defiant Disrobing: A Conversation with Naminata Diabate.” Meridians 24, no. 2 (2025): 415–32. https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-11862615.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Desiring Speculation and K’eguro Macharia’s Out-Bounds Methods.” Safundi (2025): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2025.2550043.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Notes Towards the Cinema of Spiritual Practices and Women’s Political Protests.” In Beyond the Frame: Film Criticism Conference 2023, 104–9. Riyadh: Film Commission of Saudi Arabia, 2024.
- Diabate, Naminata. “‘I Want to Be Involved in Constructing the World’: In Discussion with Malala Andrialavidrazana.” Monsoon 1, no. 2 (2023): 60–74.
- Diabate, Naminata. “(Digital) Anthologies and Genre: Writing Sexual Pleasure and Poetic Freedom.” Journal of the African Literature Association 17, no. 1 (2023): 87–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2023.2181520.
- Diabate, Naminata. “Afri-Queer Fugitivity in African Cinema.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 29, no. 4 (2023): 504–7. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-10740451.
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