Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Dadland Maye was a fall 2020–spring 2022 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Africana Studies and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. He earned his Ph.D. in English at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He specializes in queer social justice movements, Africana studies, the Caribbean, and gender and sexuality studies. His book manuscript, “The Making of a Queer Caribbean: Grassroots, Dancehall, and Literary Advocacy (1975–2015)” analyzes literature, dancehall music, and grassroots organizations as three significant social justice movements. In utilizing an innovative and trans-disciplinary methodology grounded in ethnography, historical, and discourse analysis, the project provides critical new understandings of the constructions of gender and sexuality in the African diaspora. He is also working on a book of essays, “Erotic Testimonials, Hallelujah!,” that draws on his erotic experiences in Jamaica and the U.S. as didactic diasporic testimonies. The body of essays highlights that gay sex and sexuality have functioned as productive movements in disabling internalized racism, legacies of religious violence, and cultural homophobia. In conjunction with his writing, he rigorously attends to self-care through exercising, world traveling, and erotic self-awareness. As he sees it, these diverse embodiments of self-love are glory-centered articulations that nurture the urgency of diasporic solidarity and social justice.

In 2021–2022, he served on the institute’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP) committee.

Read an interview about his research in The Humanities in Practice.