Events
Upcoming
Past events
April 29, 2026 • 6:30 pm
Lower Level Theater, Barnard Hall
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.
April 8, 2026 • 6:30 pm
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.
March 27, 2026 • 6:00 pm
Heyman Center Common Room
Anupama Rao and C. Riley Snorton
Student-led symposium exploring universities’ roles in society, examining social inequality, segregation, and education through critical research, archives, and activism, connecting campus histories with broader political structures.
March 26, 2026 • 6:00 pm
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall
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.
March 10, 2026 • 6:30 pm
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall
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.
February 27–28, 2026
Event Oval and Barnard Hall
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.
February 4, 2026 • 6:30 pm
Recirculation
Marisa Solomon, J.T. Roane, Mon Mohapatra, 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 Mohapatra (Community Justice Exchange), moderated by C. Riley Snorton (English & Comparative Literature and ISSG, Columbia).
December 16, 2025 • 5:30 pm
BCRW Conference Room, 614 Milstein Center
Sarah Haley, Emily Thuma, Sandra Moyano-Ariza, and Rebecca Jordan-Young
Join the editors of The Scholar and Feminist Online to celebrate the Fall 2025 issue, “Abolition Feminism and the Politics of Reproduction.” The conversation explores the issue’s development, key themes, and how abolition feminism examines and reimagines the gendered, racialized, and classed systems shaping everyday life and social reproduction.
November 6, 2025 • 6:30 pm
Event Oval, Diana Center, Barnard College
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.
October 30, 2025 • 6:30 pm
Online
Kim 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.