Naimah Petigny

Naimah Zulmadelle Pétigny is a Black feminist scholar, dancer, and abolitionist educator. She is an Assistant Professor of Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and holds the Schiller Family Assistant Professorship in Race in Art and Design. Pétigny’s research and teaching are shaped by her experiences as a youth organizer, racial justice facilitator, and dancer in professional ensembles. Petigny grew up in western Massachusetts, and her family’ roots are in Jamaica, Haiti, and Tallahassee, FL. Pétigny holds a BA in Women’s Studies and Sociology from Vassar College and a PhD in Feminist Studies from the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. She writes toward expansive, experimental notions of Blackness, haunting, coloniality, and movement. Her current research projects center contemporary Black performance; practices of remembrance; and questions of inheritance. Pétigny’s work has been published in Commoning Ethnography, the Walker Art Center Magazine, AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges Journal, and the Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies.