Brigitte Salami

PhD 2005 University of Iowa (Art History)
MA 1999 University of Iowa (Art History)
BA 1997 San Francisco State University (Studio Art/Art History)

Brigitte Salami is Associate Professor of Art History. She teaches courses focused on World Art. Prior to joining PNCA in 2012, she taught at Southern Methodist University, Dallas (2000), DePaul University, Chicago (2002-04), the University of Illinois, Chicago (2004), and the University of Kansas (2004-2011).

Her specialization is in African Art. She has conducted extensive field research in the Middle Cross River region of Nigeria (1998, 1999, 2001-02, 2006, 2011), where Yakurr and their neighbors celebrate elaborate new yam festivals. These give rise to performances practices, processions, masquerades, body arts, etc. Her interests further span modern, contemporary, and transnational African art. Much of her thought is rooted in postcolonial theory.

Brigitte is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a FLAS (Foreign Language and Areas Studies) Fellowship (1999), the Distinguished Master Thesis Award of the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (2000), a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship (2001-02), a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute with jonit-residency at the National Museum of African Art and the National Museum of Natural History(2010), a West African Research Association Fellowship (2011), and a Sainsbury Research Center Visiting Fellowship at the University of East Anglia (2011). Her coedited Wiley Blackwell volume (2013), A Companion to Modern African Art, received ACASA’s (Arts Council of the African Studies Association) Honorable Mention for the 2014 Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award.