Events
Engaging our communities
Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability
This year’s Scholar & Feminist conference brings together feminism and disability studies, two fields that have contributed to the interrogation of the public/private divide, and when brought together, radically contest and amplify the ways in which this split has produced extremely thin understandings and practices of accessibility, participation, livelihood, visibility and integration. “Movements: Politics, Performance, […]
Read MoreIntersectionality in STEM Fields: A Roadblock in Theory and Practice
Evelynn Hammonds
Intersectionality is a concept that describes how socially constructed categories like race, class, and gender can interact on many different levels, leading to discrimination and inequality. While the notion of intersectionality has been a powerful idea to capture the multiple and complex ways that women of color have been marginalized in the academy, in the […]
Read MoreReligion, Race, and Sex in the American Antislavery Mission to Jamaica
Gale Kenny
Before the Civil War, white American abolitionists established a mission in Jamaica as a “test case” for emancipation. The abolitionists struggled to reconcile their political commitment to egalitarianism with the racial and cultural hierarchies of their civilizing mission. The talk will examine this tension through the lens of a sex scandal that almost destroyed the […]
Read MoreCarnivorous Virility: Becoming Dog in Pre- & Post-Modernity
Carla Frecerro
In this lecture, Professor Freccero argues for a queering of temporality that would undo our nationally circumscribed and periodized fields of literary study in order to work through figures that haunt texts across historical eras. Her case study involves cynanthropy, the merger of human man and dog; it takes as its starting point the Columbian […]
Read MoreCurrent Cravings, Strange Desires, and Frightening Things: The Effect of the Frontal Lobe and Amygdala on Affect and Actions
Elisabeth A. Murray
Dr. Elisabeth Murray’s laboratory studies the neural basis of learning, memory, emotion and action. One topic of particular interest is the neural bases of decision-making. What motivates us to make choices? How do our emotional responses lead to certain decisions over others? Examining the neural circuits critical for affective processing and the way in which […]
Read MoreThe Arts of Healing: The Work of Quilts in Grief
Lisa Collins
This visual presentation explores possible parallels between the process of grieving and the practice of quilt-making by focusing on a 1942 quilt from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, created by Missouri Pettway (1902-1981). Featured in the popular traveling exhibition “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend,” this 7 1/2 foot by 5 3/4 foot stained “work-clothes” quilt offers lessons […]
Read MoreIntimacies Deferred: Genealogies of Freedom
Lisa Lowe
Historians characterize the early nineteenth-century arrival of Chinese “coolies” to the Americas as “the transition from slavery to free labor,” in which the abolition of slavery and the introduction of indentured labor comprised the conditions for the emergence of liberal political reason, connecting the rise of bourgeois political economic institutions in Europe and North America […]
Read MoreHollaBack!: Feminist Responses to Street Harassment
Shannon Lynberg, Emily May, Oraia Reid, and Chai Shenoy
Street harassment, or sexual harassment in public spaces, is an issue with which just about every woman has some experience. Activists from New York City and Washington, DC will discuss new, innovative ways to combat street harassment using technology, mapping, and community organizing. Through online activism, public policy and advocacy, and outreach, these activists have […]
Read MoreChristianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality
Elizabeth Castelli, Eng-Beng Lim, Ju Hui Judy Han, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Jordan Alexander Stein
After last fall’s McIntyre lecture on the influence of Christianity on foreign policy and religious freedom in Egypt by Professor Saba Mahmood of the University of California Berkeley, we return to the topic of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics with this panel discussion. Focusing specifically on sexuality, our panelists will discuss the ways in which […]
Read MoreIn Quest of a Modernist Voice: Bronislava Nijinska in Post-Revolutionary Kiev
Lynn Garafola
Bronislava Nijinska is the most celebrated woman choreographer of the twentieth century working in the ballet idiom. This talk will explore a pivotal moment in her development as an artist—her years in Kiev just after World War I—and the impact of the city’s multi-ethnic avant-garde on the creation of her first original works. Lynn Garafola […]
Read MoreMakeshift Reclamation
Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, Maegan "la Mala" Ortiz, Mariana Ruiz Firmat, Alexis Pauline Gumbs '04, among others
A multimedia event showcasing how contemporary feminists are resisting and creating alternatives not only to gender-based oppression but also to a collapsing economic system, the climate crisis, and more. Featuring live readings, performances, and video works by artists and activists including Jessica Hoffmann, coeditor/copublisher of make/shift; Hilary Goldberg, whose new project, recLAmation, is a Super […]
Read MoreA,R,+D: Architecture, Research, and the Design Process
Karen Fairbanks
The role of digital design and fabrication has transformed the contemporary architectural practice. This talk will look at architecture projects by Marble Fairbanks that engage these new technologies to explore new logics of design and assembly. Parallel to this research is a commitment to collaborative design processes and a belief that the collective intelligence of […]
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