Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis will visit Cornell Sept. 17-18 and give a public lecture, "The Prison: A Sign of U.S. Democracy?" Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. in Sage Chapel.

The lecture will be preceded by a welcoming reception and book signing from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Africana Studies and Research Center, which is sponsoring Davis' visit.

While on campus, Davis will visit classes in Africana studies and government and will meet and speak with students at Carl Becker House. She also will attend a dinner with Africana Center faculty and students on Sept. 17.

Davis has written extensively on prison issues and prison-related oppression, and has conducted extensive research on issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her book "Are Prisons Obsolete?" (Seven Stories Press, 2003) was the focus of an Africana Center reading project in 2006-07 for faculty and incoming graduate students.

Her activism draws from her own experiences; in the early 1970s, Davis spent 18 months in jail and on trial after being placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. A persistent theme of her work is the range of social problems associated with incarceration, and the generalized criminalization of communities most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.

Davis is on the faculty at the University of California-Santa Cruz as a professor of feminist studies and of the history of consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program. She is now completing a book on prisons and American history.

Davis' visit to Cornell is co-sponsored by the Society for the Humanities; Carl Becker House; Cornell United Religious Work; the Committee on Special Educational Projects; Ujamaa Residential College; Minority, Indigenous and Third World Studies; the Department of Government; and the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development.