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Sheyda Aisha Khaymaz joins the Department of Art and Art History as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Khaymaz received a Ph.D. in Art History with a graduate certificate in Native American and Indigenous Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2026, where they taught introductory classes in art history. Their research interests span global modernisms, Indigenous critical theory, calligraphic abstraction, environmental history, and photography theory. Their current project examines the ways artists across North Africa have drawn, since the 1950s, on the symbolic repertoire of ancestral sign-making practices, notably tattooing, as strategies for cultural sovereignty and decolonization.

Publications

“On Permanency: Rethinking Settler Colonialism in Algiers or Fanon’s lieu en ébullition.” Settler Colonial Studies 16, no.1 (2026): 191–223.

“‘Verbs Are a Tragedy’: Poetics of Refusal from the Black Diaspora.” Journal of Black Studies 54, no. 4 (2023): 271–287.