Dora Apel (born January 22, 1952) is an American art historian, cultural critic, author, and W. Hawkins Ferry Endowed Chair Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary Art at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she taught from 1994 to 2019. Her work focuses on issues of trauma, memory, race, gender, national identity, war, and the ruins of capitalism. Her book, Calling Memory into Place, includes essays that delineate her family's history during and after the Holocaust. Two of her books address the history of lynching black people in the United States.