Three Prominent Scholars to join the Faculty of Africana Studies and Research Center

The Africana Studies and Research Center (ASRC) at Cornell University conducted a very successful search for three senior faculty positions during the academic year 2006-2007. ASRC Director, Salah M. Hassan, is pleased to announce the appointment of three prominent senior scholars: Carole Boyce Davies Professor of African and African Diaspora Literature, Judith Byfield, Associate Professor of African History, and Grant Farred, Professor of African American Literature and Cultural Studies. These exciting appointments (with two more expected this academic year) are envisioned as part of a five-year plan and self-study by the faculty of ASRC, which include major revitalization of its undergraduate and graduate curricula as a step toward instituting a doctoral program in Africana studies at Cornell. The plan also include strengthening teaching of African languages, and building of study abroad and exchange programs in Ghana, Ethiopia and South Africa.

Dr. Carole Boyce Davies will join Cornell from the English and African-New World Studies at Florida International University (FIU). Recruited to build the African-New World Studies Program at FIU, she served as its director for three successful three-year appointments, which moved the program to international recognition. Boyce-Davies has degrees from the University of Maryland (BA, 1972); Howard University (M.A., 1974) and (University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Ph.D., 1978). She held distinguished professorships at a number of institutions, including the Herskovits Professor of African Studies and Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Routledge, 1994) and Left of Karl Marx. Claudia Jones, Black/Communist/Woman (Duke University Press, forthcoming, 2007). In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Boyce-Davies has also published the following critical anthologies: Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (Africa World Press, 1986); Out of the Kumbla. Caribbean Women and Literature (Africa World Press, 1990); and a two-volume collection of critical and creative writing entitled Moving Beyond Boundaries (New York University Press, 1995): International Dimensions of Black Women's Writing (volume 1), and Black Women's Diasporas (volume 2). She is co-editor with Ali Mazrui and Isidore Okpewho of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 1999) and Decolonizing the Academy. African Diaspora Studies (Africa World Press, 2003). She is general editor of The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, forthcoming, 2007), a two-volume encyclopedia. Currently, Dr. Boyce Davies is writing a series of personal reflections called Caribbean Spaces. Between the Twilight Zone and the Underground Railroad, dealing with the issue of transnational Caribbean/American black identity, and is preparing an edition of the writings of Claudia Jones entitled Beyond Containment: Claudia Jones, Activism, Clarity and Vision. Dr. Boyce Davies will be joining Cornell in Fall 2008.

Dr. Carole Boyce Davies will join Cornell from the English and African-New World Studies at Florida International University (FIU). Recruited to build the African-New World Studies Program at FIU, she served as its director for three successful three-year appointments, which moved the program to international recognition. Boyce-Davies has degrees from the University of Maryland (BA, 1972); Howard University (M.A., 1974) and (University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Ph.D., 1978). She held distinguished professorships at a number of institutions, including the Herskovits Professor of African Studies and Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Routledge, 1994) and Left of Karl Marx. Claudia Jones, Black/Communist/Woman (Duke University Press, forthcoming, 2007). In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Boyce-Davies has also published the following critical anthologies: Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (Africa World Press, 1986); Out of the Kumbla. Caribbean Women and Literature (Africa World Press, 1990); and a two-volume collection of critical and creative writing entitled Moving Beyond Boundaries (New York University Press, 1995): International Dimensions of Black Women's Writing (volume 1), and Black Women's Diasporas (volume 2). She is co-editor with Ali Mazrui and Isidore Okpewho of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 1999) and Decolonizing the Academy. African Diaspora Studies (Africa World Press, 2003). She is general editor of The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, forthcoming, 2007), a two-volume encyclopedia. Currently, Dr. Boyce Davies is writing a series of personal reflections called Caribbean Spaces. Between the Twilight Zone and the Underground Railroad, dealing with the issue of transnational Caribbean/American black identity, and is preparing an edition of the writings of Claudia Jones entitled Beyond Containment: Claudia Jones, Activism, Clarity and Vision. Dr. Boyce Davies will be joining Cornell in Fall 2008.

Grant Farred comes to Cornell from the Literature Program at Duke University, where he taught courses in African and African and African American literature and cultural studies. Farred earned his PhD. from Princeton University in 1997, and an MA from Columbia University in 1990 after a BA from University of the Western Cape, in Cape Town, South Africa in 1988. He also taught at Williams College and Michigan University. He has served as General Editor of the prestigious journal of critical cultural studies, South Atlantic Quarterly (SAQ) since 2002. He has published in a range of areas, including postcolonial theory, race, formation of intellectuals, sport's theory, and cultural studies and literary studies. His books include Midfielder's Moment: Coloured Literature and Culture in Contemporary South Africa (Westview Press, 1999), What's My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA (2006), and his most recent Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football, (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, forthcoming 2007). He is completing a fourth book manuscript entitled, Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest (forthcoming in from University of Minnesota Press 2008, dedicated to thinking the limitations of citizenship for raced subjects. Farred also edited a volume entitled Rethinking CLR James (London: Blackwell Publishers, 1996) a collection of essays on the Caribbean intellectual written by major scholars in the field of history, literary criticism and cultural studies. He also edited a special issue of SAQ (2004) entitled After the Thrill Is Gone: A Decade of Post-Apartheid South Africa, a serious appraisal of South African democracy, its failure and its successes, in the Post-Apartheid era. Farred joined the Africana Center this fall 2007, and is currently teaching two courses cross-listed with English: “Writing the African Diaspora,” and “African-American Cultural Theory.”

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