Research interests
African American Literature Literature and Music / Jazz Studies History and politics America of the 20th and 21st Centuries and America African American and African Diaspora Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Studiesbiography
Farah Jasmine Griffin is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies; Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies and William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University. It is also an affiliated faculty of the Center for Jazz Studies. Professor Griffin received her B.A. from Harvard, where she majored in American history and literature and received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. Her main areas of interest are American and African American literature, music, and history. She has published numerous publications on topics such as race and gender, feminism, jazz and cultural politics. Griffin is the author of Who Made You Flowin ?: The African American Migration Story (Oxford, 1995), Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford Connecticut, 1854-1868 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), If you can't be free, be a mystery: Finding Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001) and co-author, with Salim Washington, of Crawling at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane and the greatest jazz collaboration of all time (Thomas Dunne, 2008). Her latest book is Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics in World War II , published by Basic Books in 2013.
Griffin worked with composer, pianist Geri Allen and director, actor S. Epatha Merkerson on two theater projects for which she wrote the book: The first, Geri Allen and Friends Celebrate the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo, with Lizz Wright, Dianne Reeves, Teri Lyne Carrington and others premiered on the main stage of the Apollo Theater in May 2013. The second, A Conversation with Mary Lou with singer Carmen Lundy, premiered on Harlem Stage in March 2014 and at The John F. Kennedy Center in May 2016. Griffin's essays and articles are in Essence, The New York Times, The Washington Post , The Nation, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, Art Forum and numerous other publications. She is also a frequent radio commentator on political and cultural issues.
