As the second in an ongoing series on innovators and authors from Cornell and Ithaca who influence our everyday lives, this afternoon we commemorate African-American History month by profiling three Cornell faculty authors whose work explores the life and culture of the contemporary African-American community.

Grant Farred, professor at Cornell's Africana Studies & Research Center, earned his PhD. From Princeton University in 1997 and joined the Africana Center in Fall 2007. He has published in a range of areas, including postcolonial theory, race, formation of intellectuals, sport's theory, and cultural studies and literary studies.

Born in South Africa, his own personal growth was fueled by dreams of English football, as a player, and then, when age and reality set in, as a fan. In a recent book, titled Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football, Professor Farred chronicles his journey and shares with the reader his experience growing up colored in South Africa, moving to England, and finally to the US, and how his passion for football kept company with his many moves. Along the journey, he considers the contradictions of football, how race and class politics mix and how Farred's own ideas about what it means to be a colonial subject is both reinforced and liberated by the idea of football.

Margo Natalie Crawford is a twentieth century Americanist focusing on African-American literature and intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. She focuses on issues ranging from race and American modernism to twenty-first century African-American literature. A key figure in the recent wave of scholarship on the 1960s and early 1970s Black Arts movement, she is now completing a book connecting word and image interplays in the Black Arts movement and the 21st century.

She is the author of the 2008 book Dilution Anxiety and the Black Phallus, a study of the body politics of lighter and darker-skinned blackness. Her work explores and analyzes depictions of colorism in the work of Gertrude Stein, Wallace Thurman, William Faulkner, Black Arts poets, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and John Edgar Wideman.

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is an assistant professor within Cornell's English Department. Her research and teaching interests include creative writing/poetry, poetry and science, 19th Century American literature and African-American literature. She is the author of Open Interval and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as the book Poems in Conversation and a Conversation.

Drawing upon junction of astronomy and mathematics, history, literature, and lived experience, the poems in her book Open Interval locate the self in the interval between body and name. Professor Van Clief-Stefanon's collection is colorful and playful, grounded in reality, yet other-worldly at the same time.

We hope you take the time to explore works of these three colorful Cornell scholars authors as African-American History Month continues throughout February.

~Statement by President David Skorton on Death of Matthe... (Sat 3/13)
~Police Investigate Death of Cornell Junior Matthew Zika (Fri 3/12)
~Body Recovered From Fall Creek Gorge (Thu 3/11)
~Governor of Puerto Rico to Speak at Cornell (Fri 3/5) 2 Comments
~Supreme Court Ruling Restricts Clean Water Act (Tue 3/2)
~Google Fiber In Tompkins County (Mon 3/1)
~Cornell Students Enjoy Massive Snowfall (Sat 2/27)
~TCAT Shuts Down, Parking Restrictions Implemented as Sn... (Thu 2/25)
~Parking Restrictions Due to Storm (Thu 2/25)
~Shooting at Pete's Grocery and Deli (Tue 2/23)
~93 Million Americans Without Broadband Internet Access (Tue 2/23)
~Cornell Freshman Found Dead Under Thurston Avenue Bridg... (Wed 2/17)
~SA Resolution on Housing Policy Passes (Tue 2/16)
~The Cornell University Swim Test (Fri 2/12) 2 Comments
~Microsoft Cracks Down On Cracks (Thu 2/11)
~Google As A Future ISP? (Thu 2/11)
~President Clinton Hospitalized, But In 'Good Spirits' (Thu 2/11)
~Around the Corner: Ithaca's 12th Annual Chili Cook-Off (Wed 2/10)
~Drake to Headline Slope Day 2010 (Mon 2/8)
~Proposed Budget Cuts to Cornell's Theatre, Film and Dan... (Sun 2/7)
~New Discovery In Dinosaur Colors (Thu 2/4) 1 Comment
~Major Vaccine-Autism-Link Paper Retracted, Proven Inval... (Thu 2/4) 3 Comments
~Cornell Innovators: African-American History Month Edit... (Wed 2/3)
~Dr. Robert C. Baker's Cornell Chicken Barbeque Sauce Re... (Mon 2/1)
~Cornell Innovators: The Inventor of the Chicken Nugget (Mon 2/1)
~A Closer Look At The Cornell Greek System (Fri 1/29) 2 Comments
~President Obama Delivers First State Of The Union Addre... (Thu 1/28)
~J. D. Salinger Dies At Age 91 (Thu 1/28) 1 Comment
~World Renowned Economist to Speak at Cornell (Wed 1/27)
~Rutgers Dining Scandal (Tue 1/26)