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 conceptual reflection on how protest nudity functions as a locus of contestation and subjugation. Naked Agency proposes open reading, a reading praxis that tracks manifestations of a phenomenon across genres and platforms for deeper conceptualization. At the same time, 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, as well as 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
“Naked Agency, Agency Brokers, and the Ethics of Responsibility: A Response.” Safundi 27.2(2026):263–268.
“Coda: Some Reflections on Naked Agency, Visual Dissemination, and the Search for Human,” eds. Carole Boyce Davies, Bibi Bakare-Yusef, Janell Hobson, Angelique V. Nixon, & Christen Smith. The Black Feminist Theories Handbook: Transnational Approaches. London: Bloomsbury, 2026.
“Nude Protests in Africa, the Digital and the Human.” Reader-36th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil, 2025.
(Non)Genealogical Radical Queerness: On A Schizophrenic Reading of Frieda Ekotto’s Chuchote pas trop.” Transafrican: The Languages of Postqueerness, Ed. Chantal Zabus and Chris Dunton. London: Bloomsbury, 2025. 113-135
“(Digital) Anthologies and Genre: Writing Sexual Pleasure and Poetic Freedom.” Journal of the African Literature Association (2023) : 17.1: 87-111.
“On Visuals and Selling the Promise of Sexual Plaisir and Pleasure in Abidjan.” African Studies Review 65.4 (2022): 863–885. Pleasure in Africa and Its Diaspora. Ed. Tejumolan Olaniyan and Moradewun Adejunmobi.
“Going A Piece of the Way with Carole Boyce Davies’s Migrating Subject.” Journal of the African Literature Association 16. 2 (2022): 286-301.
“Whither Homework or Fieldwork? On Díya, Plaisir, and Pleasure.” Journal of the African Literature Association 16.1 (2022): 193-199.
“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.
Interviews
“Being Granular about Defiant Disrobing: A Conversation with Naminata Diabate.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 24.2 (2025): 415-432.
“‘I Want to be Involved in Constructing the World’: In Discussion with Malala Andrialavidrazana.” Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim 1.2: 2023: 60-74.
“Naked Agency as Concept and Reading Praxis,” Conducted by Iana Robitaille. The Ethnic & Third World Literatures (E3W) Review of Books 20 (Spring 2020).
“From Women Loving Women in Africa to Jean Genet and Race: A Conversation with Frieda Ekotto.” Journal of the African Literature Association 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.
Book Blurbs and Endorsements
Blurb, The Ndola Muto Salon by Frieda Ekotto, Bucknell University Press, 2027
Blurb, Postcolonial Imperialism: Critique of the Society of Dazzlements by Joseph Tonda. Duke University Press, 2026.
Blurb, Pandemic Genres: Imagining Politics in a Time of AIDS by Neville Hoad. University of California Press, 2025.
Blurb, Castration Desire: Less is More in Global Anglophone Fiction by Robinson Murphy. London: Bloomsbury Academic: NY, 2023.
Blurb, Contested Borders: Queer Politics and Cultural Translation in Contemporary Francophone Writing from the Maghreb by William J. Spurlin, London: Bloomsbury Academic: NY, 2022
Blurb, Habiba, A novel by Razina T. Mohammed. Lakewood, CO. 2019
Endorsement: Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella by Frieda Ekotto. Bucknell University Press, 2019.
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.
News
Media Appearance
L’invité, Le Talk des Vacances. Life TV. August 12, 2026. My profile begins at 1h45mn
Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellow: Reflections. The Africa Institute, the Global Studies University, Sharjah. The United Arab Emirates. June 2025.
“Promising Pleasure and Eliciting Displeasure: On Girlhood, Personhood, and Perversity.” The Keynote Lecture of the Women’s Caucus. The 67th African Studies Association Annual Meeting. Chicago, Illinois: December 2024.
“Prof. Naminata Diabate in Conversation with Ndirangu Wachanga.” Memory Lab. Writing Africa Writing. September 2023.
Episode 188: Naked Protests. Unladylike. April 18, 2023.
Extensively Quoted in NBC News “Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’ album release prompts more Tay-spiracies on social media” by Kalhan Rosenblatt. October 21.
Explainer: “How did Leymah Gbowee’s protests lead to lasting peace?: A Conversation with Naminata Diabate.” Bartels Explainer, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University. April 21
Podcast: The Comb, BBC World Service. “Naked Power.” UK. March 25.
Podcast: “Think Africa on Naked Agency.” Sound Africa. South Africa. October 2021
Podcast: Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. New Books in Women’s History.” Journal of Women’s History and New Books Network. May 2021
“Naked Agency.” Academic Minute, aired on PBS. December 7, 2020. https://academicminute.org/2020/12/naminata-diabate-cornell-university-naked-agency/
“LGBT Studies Alumni Spotlights a Student-Professor Interview.” Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University. December 3, 2020. https://fgss.cornell.edu/lgbt-studies-alumni-spotlights-student-professor-interview.
“Mon livre analyse la nudité comme une arme de résistance politique et sociale”: Entretien. L’expression (Côte d’Ivoire). November 6, 2020, p.6
“Une femme d’exception”, interview. Amina Magazine, August 2011. pp. 22-24.
“Table Ronde,” Radio Interview. Afrik Media Radio, August 25, 2009
“Applause,” Radio Interview. West Africa Democracy Radio (WADR), June 21, 2009
Book Reviews
Forum, “Desiring Speculation and K’eguro Macharia’s Out-Bounds Methods.” K’eguro Macharia’s Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora (NYU Press, 2019). Safundi 27.2 (2026): 179–183.
“Afri-Queer Fugitivity in African Cinema”: A Review of Queer African Cinemas by Lindsey B. Green-Simms. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 29.4 (2023): 504–507.
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
In the news
- Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’ album release prompts more Tay-spiracies on social media
- 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