M. Shadee Malaklou (she/they) is founder and inaugural director of the bell hooks center at Berea College, as well as chair and associate professor of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is also visiting faculty at the Centre for Expanded Poetics at Concordia University in Montreal. Prior to joining Berea’s faculty in 2019, Shadee served as assistant professor (2016-2019) and acting chair (2018-2019) of Critical Identity Studies at Beloit College, where she was also a Mellon Faculty Fellow for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and faculty curator of Beloit College’s Wright Museum of Art.
A critical, trans-disciplinary scholar of race/ism, gender and sexuality (and their intersections), Shadee approaches questions of identity and difference from a problem-oriented perspective, wanting to make sense of our world in real time. She publishes widely in academic journals and regularly writes think pieces; for example, on topics like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, BLM and DAPL, the sports-media complex, women’s freedom movements and animal rights. Likewise, Shadee contributes to academic and popular culture podcasts. Wanting to intervene not in politics but in the operations of power — wanting all life (rather than “all lives”) to matter — Shadee’s academic work is informed by prior career experience in journalism/communications and nonprofit organizing. She received her PhD in Culture and Theory and graduate certificates in Critical Theory and Feminist Studies from the University of California, Irvine; and her BA in Cultural Anthropology and Women’s Studies from Duke.
