Samaa Abdurraqib, PhD (she/her/hers) is the Associate Director at the Maine Humanities Council, a position she’s held since March 2021. 

Samaa has lived in unceded Wabanaki Territory since 2010, when she relocated from unceded territory of the Ho-Chunk Nation for a Visiting Associate Professorship at Bowdoin College. Samaa taught in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program for three years, teaching courses on Muslim memoir, Islam and feminism, and representations of violence against women in literature and film. Samaa received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s English Department in 2010. 

Samaa left Bowdoin in 2013 and, after teaching a semester at the University of Southern Maine, left the academia to begin a career in Maine’s nonprofit world. From 2013 through 2015, Samaa joined the staff at the ACLU of Maine as a reproductive justice organizer. After that grant funded position ended, Samaa joined the staff at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, where she worked for five years supporting domestic violence advocates across the state through training, technical assistance, and policy work. Since March of 2021, Samaa has been working at the Maine Humanities Council as the organization’s Associate Director. 

Samaa is excited to get involved in the Tidal Shift project because she believes that art has the capacity and the power to capture a moment and move people into action. She believes in the long, historical connections between art and activism, and is excited to see these connections articulated by young artists who are confronting our current climate crisis.  

Samaa’s love of Maine’s natural landscape is what inspired her to shift careers and root herself here. She tries to spend as much time as she can outside birdwatching, hiking, and kayaking. One of the most fulfilling roles Samaa has held is being a volunteer leader for Outdoor Afro, a national organization committed to (re)connecting Black people to the outdoors and connecting Black people to each other through the outdoors.