Nora Alami
Primary Department: Performance Studies
Began Graduate Studies: 2023
Nora Alami is a Moroccan-American experimental artist and Ph.D. student. She grew up in Colorado and earned a B.A. in Psychology at Colorado College, with a minor in Philosophy. For the last decade, Nora has worked in New York as an independent dance-maker and creative producer supporting festivals, collectives, non-profits, and independent artists. Her artistic works dramatize the discomfort of discussing identity, express nostalgia for a sense of belonging never quite experienced, and join disparate realities through ritual, embodiment, and sensuality.
Nora’s graduate research at Northwestern theorizes the erotic and alterity in the Arab diaspora at sites of dance-making and performance. Creating her own artistic work and collaborating as a creative producer moved her to investigate how artists negotiate their own desires with the desires of the audience, curator, and funder. Her wider research interests include queer theory, feminist theory, Black studies, postcolonial theory, and the relationship between the Arab and African diasporas.