Naiima Khahaifa Studies Human Bonds Hidden Behind Prison Walls

From Duke's Department of African & African American Studies: 

"When people think about geography, they usually think about it as a physical science, but it's also a social science," said Naiima Khahaifa. "I'm a human geographer. I study how people navigate Earth's social landscape — specifically, people from marginalized groups."

Khahaifa's interest in uneven international development led her to complete a master's degree in international trade. But after reading research from prominent Black feminist geographers like Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Katherine McKittrick, Khahaifa was inspired to look more closely at issues of uneven development in her own hometown of Buffalo, New York, where both of her parents worked in the prison correctional system. 

As she learned more about the history of western New York and the region's impact on U.S. prison policy and the rise of mass incarceration, Khahaifa's interests shifted toward domestic issues of uneven urban development and carceral geographies. 

Khahaifa earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Buffalo, SUNY, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Dartmouth College. This fall, Khahaifa joins the department of African & African American Studies as an assistant professor. She'll teach two courses offered for the first time at Duke: Carceral Geographies, which explains mass incarceration in the United States, and Black Geographies, which explores borders, boundaries and Blackness in the U.S.

The development of this groundbreaking undergraduate coursework is based on Khahaifa's expertise in the carceral state — and on her highly-specialized research exploring the understudied perspectives of the Black correctional workforce.

Before the early 1970s, the U.S. prison correctional workforce was comprised of predominantly white men. Khahaifa's parents were part of a recruitment effort following the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising. The event involved a group of incarcerated men who made several demands of prison officials during the revolt, including the recruitment of more Black and Spanish-speaking correctional officers.

"My parents were recruited into corrections as part of that integration initiative," Khahaifa shared. "My mom was a C.O. and my dad was a superintendent. My parents' part in that effort made me feel super connected to this work, and to the Attica Uprising and the men who died, even though it happened before I was born. It's a big part of how my research came about." 

"I had this alarming realization that the reason I was able to become a scholar and spend time meandering through college, figuring out who I wanted to be, was because my parents had resources from working for this violent, racialized prison system," Khahaifa said. "I was benefiting from a system that devours a segment of the population that looks just like me."

But Khahaifa also realized that her parents' roles in the prison corrections workforce provided her unique entrée into the system, allowing her access to research the hidden kinship bonds that develop between Black incarcerated people and Black correctional officers. 

"My mom had a notebook with all her co-workers' phone numbers, and she'd call them up and say: 'Hey, how you doing? My daughter's working on this thing. Here she is, she'll tell you about it' and then she'd pass me the phone," she said. 

Khahaifa's research involved months of life-history interviews with Black correctional officers in Buffalo. The community of correctional officers rallied around her when they found out she was working on her dissertation — Making Prisons Work: Black Correctional Officers and Carceral Geographies of Western New York — and she began getting calls from more and more correctional officers who wanted to participate. 

"It was like a snowball effect," she said. "There was a level of trust and rapport that they might not have had with other people. I think that's why there's interest in my work — I have this unprecedented access because of my personal connection."

Khahaifa's current and ongoing research explores solidarities and tensions that emerge, particularly between Black incarcerated men and Black women correctional officers, and how care exists in spaces like prisons, which are often defined by violence and masculinity. 

"I'm still thinking through a lot of these ideas, but I'm finding that care and violence in prison exist symbiotically. They both are working towards sustaining the institution."

Khahaifa describes the way her creative ambitions intersect with her work as enlightening.

"My favorite part of my research is that I get to be a storyteller," she said. "There was a time when I resented the work because I felt like it was taking away my ability to be creative, but I had to think of it differently. I see my research as my art and my purpose — and now, I am storytelling for social justice."

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(Photo by: John West, Trinity Communications)