Grant Farred, a native of South Africa, is a professor of Africana Studies and English at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
. He has previously taught at
Williams College
Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
, the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, and
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
. He has written several books, served for eight years as editor of ''
South Atlantic Quarterly
The ''South Atlantic Quarterly'' is an American little magazine founded by John Spencer Bassett, a history professor at Trinity College, in 1901. The magazine published articles about on southern history and, following the example of the ''Sewanee ...
'', and is a leading figure in contemporary African-American Studies, Cultural Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.
Early life and education
Farred received a B.A. from the
University of the Western Cape
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other un ...
in 1987 and an Honours B.A. from the same institution in 1988; an M.A. from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1990; and a PhD from
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...
in 1997. At Columbia, he studied under Edward Said, whom he has described as his mentor and as "a model for being engaged in political activities outside the university."
He received a
Fulbright fellowship
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
in 1989, was a Du Bois-Rodney-Mandela Fellow at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
in 1994–1995, and was a fellow of the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke in 2002–2003.
South Atlantic Quarterly
Farred was editor of the South Atlantic Quarterly from 2002 to 2010. When he left this position, he was described as having "widened the journal's theoretical and geographic scope while keeping it rooted in its long history of political engagement." In a discussion of the history of the journal with current editor Michael Hardt, Farred called his editorship of SAQ "the most important political thing I have done in this country in the twenty-one years I've been here." During his tenure, SAQ published special issues entitled "Palestine America," "Racial Americana," and "Ambushed: A Critique of Machtpolitik." Farred also edited a special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...
's ''The Wretched of the Earth''. "This issue," according to the publisher, "revitalizes Fanon's canonical status as Third World theorist by asserting that the main imperatives of Fanon's work remain as urgent as ever: combating the psychic and physical violence of colonialism, achieving real forms of liberation for colonized peoples, and ending the degradation of people of color."
Books
Farred's books include ''What's My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals'' (2003), ''Midfielder's Moment: Coloured Literature and Culture in Contemporary South Africa'' (1999), ''Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA'' (2006), ''Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football'' (2008), and ''In Motion, At Rest: The Event of the Athletic Body'' (2014). Farred also edited ''Rethinking CLR James'' (1996).
The subject of Farred's short 2006 book Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA is described by its publisher as follows: "After a recent playoff loss, Houston head coach Jeff Van Gundy alleged that Yao Ming, his Chinese star center, was the victim of phantom calls, or refereeing decisions that may have been ethnically biased. Grant Farred here shows how this incident can be seen as a pivotal moment in the globalization of the NBA. With some forty percent of its players coming from foreign nations, the idea of race in the NBA has become increasingly multifaceted. Farred explains how allegations of phantom calls such as Van Gundy's challenge the fiction that America is a post-racial society and compel us to think in new ways about the nexus of race and racism in America."
Farred's 2008 book Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football describes "how 'football' opened up the world to a young boy growing up disenfranchised in apartheid South Africa. For Farred, being a soccer fan enabled him to establish connections with events and people throughout history and from around the globe: from the Spanish Civil War to the atrocities of the Argentine dictatorship of the 1970s and '80s, and from the experience of racism under apartheid to the experience of watching his beloved Liverpool team play on English soil."
Farred most recent book, ''In Motion, At Rest: The Event of the Athletic Body'' (2014), examines the "infamous events" of basketball player Ron Artest and footballers Eric Cantona and Zinedine Zidane, arguing that "theorizing the event through sport makes possible an entirely original way of thinking about it. He shows how what was inherent in the event is opened to new possibilities for understanding ontological being by thinking about sport philosophically.
Theorizing Black Studies: Thinking Black Intellectuals
An article by
Lawrence Lan that appeared in the
Cornell Sun
''The Cornell Daily Sun'' is an independent daily newspaper published in Ithaca, New York by students at Cornell University and hired employees.
''The Sun'' features coverage of the university and its environs as well as stories from the Associa ...
on 12 April 2010, noted that Farred had "invited two female graduate students to attend a conference at the University of Rochester entitled 'Theorizing Black Studies: Thinking Black Intellectuals.'" After the two students arrived late for one panel at the conference, Farred said to them: "When you both walked in, I thought, 'Who are these black bitches?'",
They told him that they found the comment offensive, and he apologised.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Farred, Grant
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
South African sociologists
Cornell University faculty
Duke University faculty
University of Michigan fellows