
Marquis Bey
Professor, Departments of Black Studies and English, and Programs in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Critical Theory
Marquis Bey (they/them) is Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies, as well as affiliate faculty in Critical Theory. Their work focuses on the intersections between blackness, transness and nonbinariness, and feminism. Bey is interested, then, in questions of nonnormative racialized genders, and the possibilities of imagining other modes of life outside of the rubrics instilled by white supremacy, cisnormativity, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism. They have written numerous books, most notably Black Trans Feminism as well as Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender, where they attempt to provide a theory of being and living outside of grammars of racialized and gendered violence. Their most recent, forthcoming book is titled: A Nonbinary Life. In addition to teaching within the classrooms of the university, Bey also teaches for the Northwestern Prison Education Program, and has been doing prison education for over seven years.