Naimah Petigny

Ph.D. candidate, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
University of Minnesota

Naimah Petigny is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. Born and raised in western Massachusetts, Naimah was involved with youth-led racial justice organizing from an early age. Naimah received her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in Women’s Studies and Sociology from Vassar College in 2014. Situated amongst the fields of Black Feminist Theory, Queer of Color Critique and Performance Studies, her dissertation-in-progress theorizes contemporary black being in and through sites of protest and performance. Her research aims to builds new theoretical frameworks of embodiment and representation which reclaim the black body as a generative site, rather than one marked for death and disavowal. Naimah has received numerous grants and awards including the Diversity of Views in Education Summer Research Fellowship, the Elsie Van Dyck Dewitt Fellowship and the Steven J. Schochet Interdisciplinary Fellowship in Queer, Trans and Sexuality Studies. During fall 2018 Naimah will be a visiting Instructor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.