shah noor hussein is a writer, multimedia visual artist, and public scholar crafting narratives at the nexus of Black feminist thought and Queer diaspora studies. They are a doctoral candidate and Cota-Robles Fellow in the Departments of Anthropology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. shah earned their masters in Anthropology and Social Change with a focus on queer Black feminism, liberatory pedagogy, and media production from California Institute of Integral Studies (2017).
shah’s writing has been published in numerous anthologies, including a forthcoming collection of Black feminist writing, When We Exhale (2023), alongside the works of Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, and June Jordan. Their academic writing has been published in The Black Aesthetic Volume II (2018), a collection of essays engaging Black art and visual media and Color Theory (2019), an anthology of women of color reflecting on art, academia, and the non-profit industrial complex.
shah’s experimental films have screened nationally and internationally at the Museum of Sonoma County (2022), Association of American Geographers Conference (2022 – 2023), and the Aguas Migrantes Short Film Festival in Mexico (2018). shah’s photography has been featured in galleries, museums, and arts institutions including SOMArts Cultural Center (2020), Alena Museum (2019), and Ashara Ekundayo Gallery (2018). shah's poetry has been published in The Arrow Journal (2023), Fog Lifter Press (2022), LA Review of Books (2020), Umber (2019), and CUNJUH (2017). They have performed their creative writing at the Museum of the African Diaspora (2020 - 2022), Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (2018), Eastside Arts Alliance (2017).
shah has taught anthropology, ethnic studies, and writing courses and workshops at UC Santa Cruz (2022), Stanford University (2020), Laney College (2019), and UC Berkeley (2018). Their creative and academic development has been supported by grants from the Margaret Mead Journalism Fellowship (2020), Santa Cruz Arts Council (2019), and California Institute of Integral Studies’ Center for Writing & Scholarship (2017). shah’s research illuminates the significance of young women’s cultural remixes through a multimedia study of popular culture in the African diaspora. Through this lens, Sudanese women’s adaptability to shifting political landscapes create contested spaces where national, political agendas can be unsettled, renegotiated, or reinforced.
Their life-work (re)centers marginalized voices in dialogues on alternative epistemologies and cultural reproduction through a multimedia study of Aghani Al-Banat, “Girls Music,” in their home country of Sudan.