Biography
Maya Angela Smith completed her undergraduate and master’s degree at New York University in the joint MA/BA program with the Institute of French Studies. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Romance Languages and Linguistics. Her scholarship broadly focuses on the intersection of racial and linguistic identity formations among marginalized groups in the African diaspora, particularly in the postcolonial francophone world, such as in her book Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Racial Formations, and Diasporic Imaginaries (University of Wisconsin Press 2019 ). Maya’s most recent research continues to look at race, language, and mobility but through music. Her memoir project, Reclaiming Venus: The Many Lives of Alvenia Bridges (Rising Action Press, 2024), interrogates questions of race and gender by chronicling the personal journey of Alvenia as she crossed paths with a wide variety of people in the entertainment industry, from long-term working relationships with the Rolling Stones and Roberta Flack to momentary yet extraordinary encounters with Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Tina Turner.
Meanwhile, her book Ne me quitte pas (Duke University Press, 2025)—a love letter to Nina Simone—explores how “Ne me quitte pas”—a text, a piece of cultural production written in a specific context, and a work of mass/popular art—travels across languages, geographies, genres, and generations.