nailakm@uwaterloo.ca
(519) 888-4567 x 42198
Location: ML 131
Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae is the Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance, an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, a Royal Society of Canada College Member, former Dorothy Killam Fellow (2023-2025) and a multidisciplinary artist with a #1 album called Grateful (2025). Keleta-Mae has authored Performing Female Blackness (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023) and Beyoncé and Beyond: 2013-2016 (Routledge UK, 2023); edited special issue “Black Performance in Canada” for Theatre Research in Canada/ Recherches théâtrales au Canada (45.2) and co-edited special issue “Black Futures and Freedoms” for Canadian Theatre Review (198). Keleta-Mae has performed internationally and commentated for the Reuters UK, Canadian Broadcast Corporation, Business News Network, The Canadian Press, Today’s Parent, and the British Broadcast Corporation. She is also the Principal Investigator of Black And Free, a research-creation project that has brought together artists, academics, students, and the general public through multi-year research partnerships with private and public sector organizations.
Select Works
I. Books
Keleta-Mae, Naila. Performing Female Blackness. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023.
Keleta-Mae, Naila. Beyoncé and Beyond: 2013-2016. Routledge Press (UK). 2023.
II. Chapters in Books
“Black Women Performers: ‘I don't want to do anything else.’”Analysing Gender in Performance. Paul Halferty and Cathy Leeney, Eds.Palgrave UK Press. 2022: 129-140.
“Black Lives Matter Toronto Sit-In at PRIDE.” Until We Are Free: Black Lives Matter in Canada. Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson and Syrus Marcus Ware Eds. University of Regina Press: Regina. 2020: 263-275.
“on love: Performance as pedagogy.” Performance Studies in Canada. Laura Levin and Marlis Schweitzer Eds. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal. 2017: 316-339.
III. Special Issues
Editor. “Black Performance in Canada.” Theatre Research In Canada/ Recherches théâtrales au Canada. 45 (2) 2024.
Co-Editor with Lisa Karen Cox. “Black Futures and Freedoms.” Canadian Theatre Review. Issue 198: winter 2024.
IV. Articles
“Workshop Negative: Political Theatre in Zimbabwe in the 1980s.” Theatre Research International. 44(3) 2019: 262-272.
“Black girl thought in the work of Ntozake Shange.” Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 12(2) 2019: 32-47.
“Canadian Theatre Made for Black Women.” Theatre Research in Canada. 39 (1) 2018: 227-241.
“A Beyoncé Feminist.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice. 38 (1) 2017: 236-246.
“Amiri Baraka: A Lifetime of Saying the Unsayable.” Canadian Review of American Studies. 46 (2) Summer 2016: 265-279.
“An Autoethnographic Reading of The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God.” Theatre Research In Canada. 36 (1) 2015: 74-89.
V. Music Albums
Grateful. Full-length, 10-song album with all songs, lyrics and vocals written by Naila Keleta-Mae. Toronto, Canada, June 2025.
Fire Woman. Full-length, 10-song album with all songs written by Naila Keleta-Mae. Toronto, Canada, February 2020.
bloom. Full-length album with all songs written by Naila Keleta-Mae. Toronto, Canada, June 2009.
Select Courses Taught
THPERF 102: Introduction to Performance
THPERF 282: Gender and Performance
THPERF 376: Political Performance
THPERF 378: Race and Performance