Events
Engaging our communities
Why AI Needs Feminism: From Campus Surveillance to Global Conflicts
Meredith Broussard and Lauren Klein
Why AI Needs Feminism brings together feminist critical technologists Lauren Klein (Emory University) and Meredith Broussard (NYU) with Barnard’s Saima Akhtar (Vagelos Computational Science Center) and Gabrielle Gutierrez (Neuroscience) to examine how algorithmic surveillance is reshaping everyday life—from predictive policing in New York neighborhoods of color to the data infrastructures sustaining global conflicts and occupations. This conversation challenges the myth of “data-driven decision-making” as neutral progress and asks how feminist approaches grounded in care and accountability can offer paths toward refusal and repair.
Read MoreWho Gets to Travel? Race and the Politics of Student Travel in an Era of Global Crisis
Neriko Musha Doerr, Devin Walker, Abosede George, and Tamara J. Walker
REGISTER Coming on the heels of the MMUF Distinguished Lecture with Dr. Christopher Loperena, join Neriko Doerr and Devin Walker for a lunchtime conversation on the politics, challenges, and best practices associated with crafting ethical student travel experiences for the 21st century. This event is hosted by BCRW’s Africana Routes, Africana Migrations faculty working group […]
Read MoreWe Will Not Be Erased: Queer Archives, Trans Histories
Steven Watson and Tourmaline
For over forty years, cultural historian Steven Watson has documented the stories and artwork at the leading edge of artistic and cultural movements, including the movement for queer and trans liberation. Working in collaboration with filmmaker William Markarian-Martin, Steven recently launched Artifacts, making his collection of rare, firsthand accounts from pioneers such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Holly Woodlawn, and many others accessible to students, researchers, and anyone interested in connecting to queer and trans history. Watson’s archival collection foregrounds the importance of engaging with and animating trans and queer histories in order to combat the present-day erasure of trans lives.
Read MoreThe City and the University: A Symposium
Anupama Rao and C. Riley Snorton
REGISTER The University in/and Crisis Working Group invites you to attend a symposium featuring research and activism by students at Barnard College, Teachers College, and Columbia University. Students will present work that adopts methods drawn from the field of “critical university studies,” and that draws on archives and repositories held on campus and across the […]
Read MoreOff the Spectrum: The Lost Girls of Autism
Gina Rippon and Rebecca Jordan-Young
For decades, autism research has focused overwhelmingly on boys and men, and some autism researchers even see autism itself as “masculine.” Drawing on her own decades of research with autistic women and girls, Neuroscientist Gina Rippon upends this view. Beyond highlighting autism’s manifestations in women and girls, Rippon’s research illuminates the entangled matter of gender/sex, autism, and neuroscience, and exposes the devastating effects of systemic gender bias in autism research and services.
Read More‘Wayward’ Mythography: Zora Neale Hurston and Ancient Greece
Justine McConnell, Monica L. Miller, and Rosa Andújar
Join us for the Natalie Boymel Kampen Memorial Lecture with Justine McConnell, McMillan-Stewart Fellow at Harvard University and Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London. McConnell's lecture, “‘Wayward’ Mythography: Zora Neale Hurston and Ancient Greece,” will be followed by a conversation co-moderated by Monica Miller (Africana Studies, Barnard) and Rosa Andújar (Classics, Barnard). The event will conclude with a Q&A with audience members.
Read MoreThe Scholar and Feminist: Fifty Years of Meeting the Moment
For half of a century, The Scholar and Feminist Conference has provided a mutually activating space for scholars, activists, and artists to confront the most pressing issues at any given moment. Defining scholarship as for activism from the very beginning, the conference has with unflagging regularity “met the moment” with intersectional feminist knowledge and action to inspire and build a robust response to contemporary crises. In many ways, the conference has grown up alongside academic feminism itself, yet, rather than uncritically mirror this history, it has consistently pushed back against feminism’s institutionalization. The conference highlights provocations, controversies, foundational gaps, and struggles that both cement its field-forming position and trouble a feminist progress narrative.
Read MoreThe Elsewhere Is Black: Ecological Violence and Improvised Life
Marisa Solomon, J.T. Roane, Mon M., and C. Riley Snorton
Join us for an exciting book salon in celebration of Barnard Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Marisa Solomon’s The Elsewhere Is Black: Ecological Violence and Improvised Life with J.T. Roane (Geography, Rutgers) and Mon M. (Survived & Punished), moderated by C. Riley Snorton (English & Comparative Literature and ISSG, Columbia).
Read MoreA Conversation with the Editors: Abolition Feminism and the Politics of Reproduction
Sarah Haley, Emily Thuma, Sandra Moyano-Ariza, and Rebecca Jordan-Young
Join guest editors Sarah Haley and Emily Thuma, S&F Online Senior Editor Sandra Moyano-Ariza, and S&F Online Executive Editor Rebecca Jordan-Young to mark the release of the Fall 2025 issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online, “Abolition Feminism and the Politics of Reproduction.” This conversation will focus on the issue’s development and key questions and […]
Read MoreMARSHA: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
Tourmaline in conversation with C. Riley Snorton
For the Helen Pond McIntyre ‘48 Lecture, Tourmaline will join C. Riley Snorton for a discussion of her new biography of Marsha P. Johnson. They will explore finding creative guidance in the archive, the power of Johnson’s life as a blueprint for living today, and the continued struggle for queer and trans liberation.
Read MoreThe Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Mastery, and Pleasure in the Anglo Caribbean
Kim F. Hall, Patricia A. Matthew, Debapriya Sarkar, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, and Jennifer Morgan; moderated by Tapiwa Gambura
Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Africana Studies Kim Hall’s new book The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Mastery and Pleasure in the Anglo Caribbean (The University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2025) centers the complicated history of sugar in order to ask what lies beyond its narrative of pleasure.
Read MoreSaul Williams on Black Experimentation, Fugitive Pedagogies, and the Art of Resistance
Saul Williams and Shana L. Redmond
Poet, musician, filmmaker, actor and intellectual Saul Williams discusses the relationships between aesthetic forms and political education in conversation with Dr. Shana Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference. Reflecting on practices of Black experimentation—in language, music, and film—this dialogue explores the various sites of enclosure and foreclosure, from the nation state to the university, that bear upon the present and what practices are necessary to enact more just futures.
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