Fania Noel
Visiting Assistant Professor
Biography
Fania Noël is an Afrofeminist activist, writer, and researcher. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of the Sociology of Race, Political Sociology, Gender and Sexualties Studies, and Critical Media Studies, as well as the interdisciplinary fields of Black/Africana Studies, Black Feminist Theories, and Cultural Studies. Her primary research area contributes to Critical Black Studies and Political Sociology, drawing on Black Feminist and Africana Studies scholars to explore anti-Blackness, racialized gendering, and political imagination.
Her secondary research focus examines cultural critique and gendered racialization in mainstream screenplays, particularly within the science fiction and anticipation genres. Fania Noël is working on two main projects: a research article on Haitian migrant women in New York and a book on race and gender in Science Fiction.
Her third book 10 Questions sur les Féminismes Noirs (Libertalia, 2024) offers an introduction to Global Black Feminisms scholarship. She is also the author of Et Maintenant le pouvoir: Un horizon politique afroféministe (Éditions Cambourakis, 2022) and Afro-Communautaire: Appartenir à nous-mêmes (Éditions Syllepse, 2019).
Beyond academia, Fania Noël is a prolific contributor to public scholarship across various journals and media outlets. She is deeply committed to popular education and balances her research with active involvement in community-driven projects. In 2015, she co-founded AssiégéEs, a critical Francophone journal—available both online and in print—focused on analyzing racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. This volunteer-run journal is led exclusively by women, queer, and trans people of color, and the team is currently preparing its sixth issue on techno-capitalism. In 2021, Noël curated the Haitian feminist anthology ALASO for the feminist organization Nègès Mawon, where she serves as Publication Director. The fifth issue of this anthology is scheduled for publication in November 2024. Additionally, she developed the Cycle de Formation en Études Féministes, Genre et Sexualité for Nègès Mawon—a free popular education program in Haiti featuring seminars by Haitian women writers, researchers, and artists.
Education
Ph.D. Sociology, The New School for Social Research (2024)
M.A Sociology, Paris Descartes University (2019)
M.A Political Science, Panthéon-Sorbonne University (2011)
B.A Political Science, Panthéon-Sorbonne University (2010)
Publications and Projects
Books
2024 – 10 Questions sur les féminismes Noirs (10 Questions on Global Black Feminisms). Libertalia
2022 Et maintenant le pouvoir. Un horizon politique Afroféministe. Edition Cambourakis.
2020 Afro-Communautaire. Appartenir à nous-mêmes. Edition Syllepse
Selected Publications
2024 Paris 2024 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony: Longing to Belong, Political Weaponization and Glitz, Manifesto XXI
2023 “‘Y’all celebrating Black men in Prison’: Abolitionist Black Feminist and inter-communal violence.” Duke University On Abolition Symposium. Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International.
2023 Foreword: Être avec les autres, appartenir à nous-mêmes. In bell hooks, Cultiver l’appartenance. Une cultures des lieux, translated from English by Noemie Grunenwald. Cambourakis. 8-18
2023 Le Sexisme bienveillant (Benovolent Sexism)- Monthly Column, Manifesto XXI
2023 Alice Diop’s Saint-Omer and its Lexicons of Shadows. ASAP Journal.
2023 La fabrique de l’absence: la pensée féministe décoloniale et négrophobie. Entretien avec Selamawit D. Terrefe. (The Making of Absenting: On Decolonial Feminism and AntiBlackness. Interview with Selamawit D; Terrefe) Passerelle, 24: 160 -168.
2023 Paris is Burning: Circulation of Intersectionality in France’s Academia and Activist Spaces. Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, 9/1: 184-200.
2022 Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives by Polo B. Moji. London: Routledge, 2022. 182 pp. ISBN 9780367637514. Review in Tydskrif vir letterkunde 59.2: 78-80
2022 Afterword: Être woke avec Octavia Butler. In Octavia Butler, L’Aube, translated from English by Jessica Shapiro. Au Diable Vauvert. 417-422
2021 – Intersectionnalité. In Dorlin, Elsa. (Ed.), Feu! Abécédaire des féminismes présents. Libertalia. 319-336
2021 On the Very Political Depoliticization of Reparations, Society For Cultural Anthropology