Farah Griffin

Farah Griffin, whose scholarship is published under the full name Farah Jasmine Griffin, is a literary scholar of African American writing, music, history, and cultural politics. Columbia University appointed her a University Professor in 2025 after she had served as the inaugural chair of its Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. “Who Set You Flowin’?” was her first book and examines the African American migration narrative, tracing how movement from the South shapes literary ideas of place, identity, community, and modernity. Oxford University Press issued the study in 1995. Griffin's later books connect related questions to major artists and intellectual traditions: If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery considers Billie Holiday, while Clawing at the Limits of Cool, co-written with Salim Washington, studies Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Her bibliography also includes work about Black women artists in wartime Harlem and edited collections of letters and travel writing. Her scholarship joins close literary reading to music history and the broader record of Black movement and freedom.