Cheryl Finley is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture in the Africana Studies Department at Cornell University as well as an art critic, columnist and curator specializing in photography, African American art, cultural heritage tourism and the politics of memorialization. Prior to her appointment at Cornell, she was a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Wellesley College and adjunct curator in the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley. She earned her Ph.D. in African American Studies and History of Art from Yale University. She is the author of many books, articles and essays, including From Swing to Soul: An Illustrated History of African American Music from 1930 to 1960 (1994) and Harlem Guaranteed: The Photographic Legacy of James VanDerZee (2002). In 2000, she organized Imaging African Art: Documentation and Transformation at the Yale Art Gallery. She is the co-founder (with Professor Laura Wexler) of Photographic Memory Workshop at Yale University in 1998.