Symposium
March 12, 2014
Event Oval, Diana Center

Hakima Abbas, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, Jimmie Briggs, Abena Busia, Tina Campt, Abigail Disney, Samuel G. Doe, Simidele Dosekun, Leymah Gbowee, Amina Mama, Kennedy Odede, Spectra, Sylvia Tamale, Mohamed Yahya

Symposium participants
Amina Mama, Abigail Disney, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, Sylvia Tamale, and Tina Campt (from left to right)

This website documents a unique experiment in teaching and learning at Barnard College. During the 2013-14 academic year, Barnard was proud to host Nobel Laureate and Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee as its inaugural Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice and a Transnational Fellow at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Gbowee’s year in residence included campus presentations, teaching in the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, and guest-lectures in Barnard’s Africana Studies seminars. Students, faculty and visitors benefitted from her presence on campus and attending her classes and lectures to hear her perspectives on social justice and human rights.

One of the most exciting components of Gbowee’s residency was an innovative pedagogical collaboration between Gbowee and Tina Campt, Professor of Africana and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Co-Director of BCRW. The collaboration was supported by a course development grant from Barnard’s Consortium for Critical Indisciplinary Studies. Taking advantage of Gbowee’s residency at Barnard during the 2013-14 academic year, Gbowee and Campt developed a distinctive adaptation of the WGSS Feminist Theory Colloquium. The course took advantage Gbowee’s extensive network of activists—among others, Gloria Steinem and Abigail Disney—some of whom have participated in collaborative teaching sessions with Campt and Gbowee. With the support of co-organizers Janet Jakobsen, co-director of BCRW, and Kathryn Kolbert, director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, Campt and Gbowee organized the African Women’s Rights and Resilience Symposium in celebration of International Women’s Day on March 12. The event explored the situation of women in the Global South against the backdrop of women’s accomplishments around the world.