Maya Ghanem Arts Administration Fellow

Maya (they/she) is an aspiring researcher, community builder, and artist focusing on queer Muslim solidarity. As a leader of the queer Muslim group Jummah 4 All, they organized prayer services, social events, artist workshops, scholarly talks, Ramadan dinners, and political involvement. Receiving a Bachelor of Arts from the International Comparative Studies Department at Duke, Maya wrote their honors thesis on queer Muslims and environmental futurisms, highlighting the interconnected potential to break Orientalist queer/Muslim and human/nature binaries. Maya also published an article in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Journal on a queer and decolonial approach to sexual ethics while analyzing Arab media. In their first art installation at VAE Raleigh, Maya explored relational subjectivity, incorporating queer and Muslim elements into make-up and photography portraits of her close friends. 

maya.ghanem@duke.edu