Naminata Diabate

Naminata Diabate is an Ivorian scholar, author, and Associate professor of Comparative literature at Cornell University. She is the author of Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. (2011) in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, with concentrations in African Diaspora Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies. She held the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists at Cornell in 2020, for academic excellence. In 2024, Diabate was named one of the "10 African Scholars to Watch" by The Africa Report, alongside Simukai Chigudu, Toyin Ajao and Satang Nabaneh. The book has been cited as a significant contribution to African feminist scholarship and biopolitical studies, offering new frameworks for understanding protest, embodiment, and power. Ololade Faniyi's review in Feminist Africa highlights how the book challenges simplistic, overly romanticised narratives of African women's defiant disrobing as purely empowering or victimising.

Awards African Studies Association (ASA), Best Book Prize, 2021. African Literature Association (ALA), First Book Award 2022.

Selected publications Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020). "Jean Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes and the Mevoungou: Ambivalence towards the African Woman’s Body". In Women, Gender, and Sexualities in Africa, edited by Toyin Falola and Nana Akua Amponsah, pp. 21–39. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2013. . "Genital Power: Female Sexuality in West African Literature and Film". Research in African Literatures, Vol. 42, No. 4 (2011): 72–93. "From Women Loving Women in Africa to Jean Genet and Race: A Conversation with Frieda Ekotto". Journal of the African Literature Association, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2010): 181–203.