Noémie Ndiaye

Noémie Ndiaye serves as Associate Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern English Literature in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. Her research sits at the intersection of early modern literary studies, critical race studies, theater and performance studies, and comparative literature, with specific focus on racial, gender, and identity formation processes. She has taught at UChicago since 2019 after earning her PhD from Columbia University in 2017 (with prior studies at École Normale Supérieure, Paris).

Her research interests revolve around theatrical representations of race across early modern Western Europe, particularly examining how performance culture transformed blackness into a racial category. She employs transnational, comparative, and transhistorical frameworks to analyze racialization through cosmetic, vocal, and kinetic techniques of impersonation. Additional research threads include visual culture, gender and sexuality studies, translation practices, and the intersections of race with capitalism and globalization in early modern contexts.

Ndiaye's publications reveal consistent focus on racial triangulation and transnational performance networks, with recent work expanding beyond Blackness to examine representations of Muslim, Jewish, Indigenous, Romani, and Asian characters in European theater. Her scholarship demonstrates methodological innovation through contrapuntal theater history and visual culture analysis, often connecting early modern racial formations to contemporary structures of white supremacy.

• 2023 Bevington Award from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society
• 2023 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize from The British Academy
• 2023 Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award
• 2024 PROSE Award for Art Exhibitions
• 2022-2023 William Nelson Prize for best article in Renaissance Quarterly

Ndiaye actively collaborates with visual artists and theater makers through UChicago's Black Baroque programming and co-curated the 'Seeing Race Before Race' exhibition at the Newberry Library. Her teaching spans undergraduate courses on Black Shakespeare, representations of Islam in early modern England, and graduate seminars in Early Modern Critical Race Studies, emphasizing intersectional trans-inclusive feminism and transnational approaches.