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Naila Keleta-Mae is an artist, poet and Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. The principal investigator of the Black and Free research-creation project, Keleta-Mae is a National Research Council of Canada Dorothy Killam Fellow, and the Tier 2 SSHRC Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance. Known for her work in Black expressive culture and Black feminisms, her scholarly contributions focus on the cultural production of Black women including music, videos, performances, plays, and poetry, and has authored two books Beyoncé And Beyond: 2013-2016 (2023) and Performing Female Blackness (2023).
Keleta-Mae was born in Toronto, Ontario and was heavily influenced by her parents, who immigrated to Canada from Jamaica in the 1960s, and were active in community building, including as members of the Afro-Caribbean Association of Manitoba during the 1970s. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and Spanish from Concordia University. Keleta-Mae completed a Masters of Arts in 2005 and a Doctorate of Philosophy, Theater Studies in 2012, both at York University. She worked as a faculty advisor at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont for two years, before joining the University of Waterloo as a lecturer in 2011, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.
In addition to scholarly contributions, research and theatrical performances, since joining Waterloo, Keleta-Mae has regularly written and commentates for major media outlets, and gained international attention in 2015 for centering Beyoncé as a topic of focus in an undergraduate Gender and Performance course. Founded in 2017, her Black and Free research-creation project, which examines Black expression in the 21st century, consists of multi-year research partnerships and includes a research team of more than 30 people. In 2022, Keleta-Mae received the UWaterloo Arts Award for Excellence in Research.
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Created February 2024 by DR.
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- "A Canada Research Chair’s lifelong pledge to discover what it means to be Black and Free". Canada Research Chairs. February 19, 2024.
- "Meet the Faculty. Naila Keleta-Mae". FAUW Blog. February 28, 2019.
- "Naila Keleta-Mae". Communications Arts.
- "Queen B gets her own university course". CAUT Bulletin. September 2015.
- "UW communication arts professor launches books exploring blackness, gender performance". Imprint. November 24, 2023.