Activism and the Academy: Activist Research – Working in Communities
What does it mean to be an activist researcher? What are some of the challenges of conducting research about social movements and within activist communities? Drawing on ethnographic and teaching experiences, panelists discuss their research on different communities and social movements, and how their roles as activist researchers affect this work. Panelists include Roberta Villalon (St. John’s University), Jennifer Rogers (Long Island University), Nikki McGary (University of Connecticut), Barbara Gurr (University of Connecticut), and Kathleen Coll (Stanford University) in this discussion moderated by Nancy Naples (University of Connecticut).
Activism and the Academy: Campus Activism
Colleges and universities are experiencing the effects of the economic downturn and our political climate in numerous ways. This panel of students and faculty discuss how activists on their campuses are working to combat budget cuts and the undermining of the public sector, provide alternatives to neoliberal restructuring in higher education, and fight against racism and gender inequities. Panelists include Abigail Boggs (University of California, Davis), Debanuj Dasgupta (Ohio State University), Stephanie Luce (Murphy Institute, CUNY), Sandra K. Soto (University of Arizona), and Jesse Kadjo (Loyola University) in this discussion moderated by Catherine Sameh (BCRW).
Activism and the Academy: Academic / Activist Partnerships in Mexico
What types of projects are possible when scholars and activists work together? Scholars in the Gender Studies Program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have formed partnerships with activist groups to address issues like state oppression and violence, struggles for land rights and indigenous rights, and gender equity both within the University and in the community at large. Scholar and activist participants in these projects discuss how they’ve combined traditional academic tools with new ways of intervention to create change. Panelists include Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius, Rian Lozano de la Pola, Lorena Wolffer, and Helena Lopez in this discussion moderated by Margaret Cerullo.
Activism and the Academy: Using Knowledge, Advancing Activism
How can activists use knowledge to advance their campaigns? How can scholars and activists work collaboratively to produce and promote knowledge that is grounded in feminist and social justice frameworks? Activists who have been able to produce and use knowledge to initiate change across numerous issues contribute to this conversation about the uses of knowledge in activist work. Panelists include Rinku Sen (Applied Research Center), Dean Spade ’97 (University of Seattle School of Law), and Jamia Wilson (Women’s Media Center) in this discussion moderated by Laura Flanders ’85 (GRITtv).
Activism and the Academy: Social Justice and Civic Engagement in the Classroom
Colleges and universities across the country are increasingly interested in adding opportunities for civic engagement to their curricula, seeking to expose their students to new ways of practicing and researching social justice. Educators from several institutions will look at the ways in which these projects can build feminist awareness and community on college campuses. Panelists include Dara J. Silberstein (SUNY Binghamton), Jerilyn Fisher (Hostos Community College), Leslie Simon (City College of San Francisco) and Stephanie Gilmore (Dickinson College) in this discussion moderated by Susannah Bartlow (Dickinson College).
Activism and the Academy: Mamphela Ramphele
In “Forwarding Feminism,” her keynote lecture at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, South African academic, activist, and writer Mamphela Ramphele offers an inspiring and thought-provoking vision for the future of feminism and activism.
Activism and the Academy: Expanding Feminism – Collaborations for Social Justice
BCRW’s commitment to bringing feminist scholars and activists together in conversation and collaboration has been at the center of our work for the past 40 years. Representatives from three organizations with whom we have recently partnered—the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Queers for Economic Justice, and the New York Women’s Foundation— discuss the unique models of feminist action and knowledge that have been produced through BCRW’s scholar-activist partnerships. Panelists include Ai-jen Poo (National Domestic Workers Alliance), Sydnie L. Mosley ’07 (dancer, choreographer and teacher), Amber Hollibaugh (Queers for Economic Justice), and Ana Oliveira (New York Women’s Foundation) in this plenary, moderated by Janet Jakobsen (BCRW).
Activism and the Academy: Transnational Feminisms Across the Americas
Feminist scholars, activists, and practitioners across the Americas are challenging gendered hierarchies in their communities, nations, and region. Whether or not they explicitly identify as feminists, their work is transforming contemporary politics and cultural relations. Through the stories of Latin American feminist networks, women-led grassroots organizations, and lesbian collectives, this panel examines the transnational strategies employed by activists across the Americas. Panelists include Ximena García Bustamante (New School for Social Research), Ariella Rotramel (Rutgers), Anahi Russo Garrido (Rutgers), and Sasha Taner (Rutgers) in this discussion moderated by Temma Kaplan (Rutgers).
Activism and the Academy: Archives and Activism – The Contemporary Turn
Over the past two decades, the archive has emerged as a central site of feminist knowledge production and activism. Feminist archives and special collections have been able to document activist movements and make previously obscured forms of knowledge visible. This panel brings together a group of feminist librarians, archivists, scholars, and activists to explore this “archival turn” in contemporary feminism. Panelists include Jenna Freedman (Barnard College), Alana Kumbier (Wellesley College) and Kate Eichhorn (The New School) in this discussion moderated by Emily Drabinski (Long Island University).
Activism and the Academy: Women’s Literature and Feminist Learning
Continuing education in the humanities is an extremely important, yet often overlooked subset of higher education. Over the years, BCRW has sought to support continued opportunities for feminist learning through a diverse series of course offerings. Current and past BCRW instructors, along with scholars of feminist literature, will discuss the value of intergenerational feminist education. Panelists include Leslie Calman, Heather Hewett and Stephanie Staal in this discussion, moderated by Lori Rotskoff.
Activism and the Academy: Living and Working in the Borderlands
Gloria Anzaldua’s groundbreaking volume Borderlands/La frontera juxtaposes poetry and prose, and research and personal narrative, forming a bridge between activism and scholarship. This panel looks at Anzaldua’s work, along with the work of two border poets, Margaret Randall and Ruth Irupé Sanabria, to explore what poetry and other creative engagements can bring to activist practices. Panelists include Margaret Randall (poet, photographer, and activist), Ruth Irupé Sanabria (poet and activist), and Michelle Gonzalez (Bard College at Simon’s Rock) in this discussion, moderated by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez (Bard College at Simon’s Rock).
Activism and the Academy: Writing, New Media, and Feminist Activism
Writing, blogging, social networking, and other forms of media are vital channels of communication for feminist activists. Panelists Mandy Van Deven (activist and writer), Ileana Jiménez (blogger at FeministTeacher.com), Veronica Pinto (Hollaback!), and Susanna Horng (Girls Write Now) discuss their own media projects and how they have used new forms of communications to support and build their movements in this discussion moderated by Courtney Martin (writer and editor at Feministing.com).
Activism and the Academy: The Multiple Futures of Gender and Sexuality Studies
Women’s and gender studies programs have been an integral part of the feminist movement for the past four decades. Over the years, the field has grown and expanded—and so has the proliferation of other disciplines devoted to the study of intersectionality, including queer studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies. What are the challenges currently facing the fields of gender and sexuality studies? Panelists Kandice Chuh, Ann Pellegrini and Sarita See reflect on the history and futures of the field in this discussion moderated by Lisa Duggan.
Activism and the Academy: Sonia Alvarez
In her keynote lecture at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, Alvarez discusses her latest intellectual and political project, the forthcoming co-edited anthology Translocalities/Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Americas.
Activism and the Academy: Opening Remarks by Janet Jakobsen
BCRW Director Janet Jakobsen delivers opening remarks at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.
Public Feelings Salon with Lauren Berlant
The inaugural event in BCRW’s Salon series, this engaged dialogue brings together several prominent and influential scholars whose work explores how affect and emotion influence public life. Just as feminism has sought to identify the ways in which the personal and the political are linked, the study of “public feelings” draws our attention to how and why feelings and emotion (assumed to be a private, personal experience) influence politics and notions of social belonging and intimacy. This conversation, moderated by BCRW Director and Professor of Women’s Studies, Janet Jakobsen, focuses on how perceptions of citizenship and solidarity are often bound up in emotions—like optimism, rage, and disgust—and how feelings can govern policy and political debates. Panelists include Jose Munoz, Ann Pellegrini, Tavia Nyong’o, and Lauren Berlant.
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster: Intersections of Judaism, Gender, and Human Rights
In this year’s Rennert Forum lecture, Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster ’01 reflects on her work as a human rights activist, mobilizing the Jewish community on campaigns against US-sponsored torture and modern slavery. Rabbi Kahn-Troster has worked tirelessly to bring about change in US foreign and domestic policy and to educate the public about the reality of torture and detainee treatment as a moral issue. In organizing across lines of faith and politics, she explores questions of how Judaism reacts to extreme violations of human dignity, what it means to recognize the sacredness of the Other, and the imperative to remember the real faces lost behind headlines. Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster is Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, where she directs campaigns against state-sponsored torture and modern slavery.
The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film
During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, a range of iconic female forms emerged to dominate the global pictorial landscape. Female athletes and adventurers, chorine stars, flappers, garçonnes, Modern Girls, neue Frauen, suffragettes, and trampky were all facets of the dazzling and urbane New Woman who came to epitomize modern femininity in photographs and on film. This construct existed as a set of abstract ideals, even as it varied when translated across national contexts and through a range of key historical moments including First Wave feminism, colonialism, the First and Second World Wars, political revolutions, and the rise of modernism. This panel, moderated by art historian Linda Nochlin, examines the nuances of visual representations of this transgressive and border-crossing figure from her inception in the later nineteenth century to her full development in the interwar period and beyond. Panelists include Elizabeth Otto, Clare Rogan, Vanessa Rocco, and Kristine Harris.
Domestic Work, Migration and Gender
This forum, organized by DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association and co-sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Barnard Women’s Studies, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, engages scholars, policy advocates, activists, and allies about the situation of immigrant women domestic workers with the Philippines as a case study. The forum is moderated by Leah Obias, and introduced by Catherine Sameh, and the list of speakers and topics includes: Neferti Tadiar, Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at Barnard College, discussing globalization, migration and domestic work; Alexa Kasdan, Director of Research and Policy at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, discussing community participatory research and organizing work; Cecille Venzon, Member of the Board of Directors of DAMAYAN, giving a worker’s testimonial; Terri Nilliasca, Activist and Student at CUNY Law Center, discussing power dynamics at the domestic workplace and the intersections of race, class, gender and immigration; and Linda Oalican, Program Coordinator of DAMAYAN, offering concluding remarks on building a comprehensive migrant domestic workers movement.
The Scholar and Feminist 2011: Simi Linton
Simi Linton delivers opening remarks to the Heidi Latsky Dance Company’s Performance of The GIMP Project at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2011, “Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability.” Simi is Co-Director/Producer of the forthcoming documentary Invitation to Dance, based on her memoir My Body Politic. She is the author of Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, and numerous articles on disability. Linton was on the faculty at CUNY for 14 years, leaving in 1998 to develop her consultancy to filmmakers, artists and cultural institutions working to shape the presentation of disability in the arts and to increase the representation of works by disabled artists. She describes dance as “the place where disability rights, disability culture and disability studies come together.” She is introduced by Janet Jakobsen in this podcast.
The Scholar & Feminist 2011: Aesthetics and Politics in Action
This discussion on Aesthetics and Politics in Action was the morning panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2011 – Movements: Poltics, Performance and Disability. This panel examines cultural, historical and transnational constructions of disability. Making connections between cultural production, performance, aesthetics, activism and scholarship, panelists explore the many contributions of disability activists to social justice. Following introductory remarks by Janet Jakobsen, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson moderates the discussion which features Carrie Sandahl, Alice Sheppard, Susan Schweik, and Nirmala Ervelles.
Carla Freccero: Carnivorous Virility
In her lecture, “Carnivorous Virility: Becoming Dog in Pre- & Post-Modernity,” 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 New World encounter, from reports of dog-headed cannibals to accounts of the devouring dog as the ubiquitous weapon of Spanish colonizers; and concludes with the attack on Diane Whipple by two Presa Canarios in San Francisco in 2001. This figure of carnivorous virility condenses in itself a whole series of New and Old World meanings, from companion to cannibal, primitive savage to savagely civilizational. Professor Freccero identifies the usefulness of alternative temporalities for understanding the historical and affective work such figures do and for the necessity of imagining agency, subjectivity, and social collectivity differently to account for such trans-species becomings. Carla Freccero is professor of Literature, Feminist Studies, and History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, where she has taught since 1991.
Christianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality
Focusing specifically on sexuality, the panelists discuss the ways in which transnational and non-governmental Christian organizations have an impact on legal and social policies in different areas where Christians may comprise a small minority or a larger percentage of the population. In addition, sexuality continues to rankle and even divide Christian churches themselves, as evidenced by the recent tensions in the Anglican Communion over LGBT clergy members. This panel explores debates about sexuality within Christian churches and the global reach of Christian claims about sexuality. Panelists include Jordan Alexander Stein, Ju Hui Judy Han, Eng-Beng Lim and Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and the panel is moderated by Elizabeth Castelli.
Creating Systemic Change at the Intersection of Economic and Reproductive Justice
This panel discussion moderated by Laura Flanders of GRITtv features Sylvia Henriquez (Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health), Lynn Paltrow (Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant Women), and Miriam Yeung (Executive Director, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum). The panel was part of the daylong conference “Critical Intersections: Reproductive and Economic Justice” sponsored by The New York Women’s Foundation and BCRW.
Reproductive Justice in Action
This panel discussion features a group of reproductive justice activists and birth doulas who work across the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and women’s health, connecting the traditional reproductive rights movement with new social justice activism that considers the complete physical, political, and economic well-being of girls and women. Panelists include Aisha Domingue, doula coordinator at the Brooklyn Young Mothers Collective; Mary Mahoney, assistant director of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Doula Project; Lauren Mitchell, health educator and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Doula Project; and Miriam Perez, founder and sole blogger at RadicalDoula.com and editor at Feministing.com. The discussion is moderated by Lucy Trainor.
The Scholar & Feminist 2010: Development and Sustainability
Janet Jakobsen moderates this discussion on Development and Sustainability, the second panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, “Feminism and Climate Change.” Panelists include Rachel Harris, Susan Shaw, Marcela Vasquez-Leon and Eleanor Sterling.
The Scholar & Feminist 2010: Economic, Health and Social Justice
Janet Jakobsen introduces Anene Ejikeme who moderates this discussion on Economic, Health and Social Justice, the first panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, “Feminism and Climate Change.” Panelists include Nancy Biberman, Laila Iskandar Kamel, Peggy Shepard and Winona LaDuke.
Joni Seager: Keynote Lecture from The Scholar & Feminist 2010
Joni Seager delivered the morning keynote address at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, “Feminism and Climate Change.” Already among the most vulnerable populations worldwide, women and other marginalized groups have been the most acutely affected by the instabilities produced by climate change. Issues such as water scarcity, drought, and other environmental problems threaten the world’s food supply, making it more difficult for disadvantaged groups to obtain the basic necessities of life. Increased temperatures and more intense weather patterns raise the likelihood of illness and disease, especially among the poor. Diminishing resources, known to increase conflict and war, are leading to greater numbers of “climate refugees” and displaced people. In all of these situations, women are disproportionately affected by the dangers that climate change poses to our world. Joni Seager is a scholar and activist in feminist geography, international women’s studies, and global environmental policy. She is the author of 10 books, and more than 3 dozen reports, articles, and chapters in books. In the environmental field, she was an early pioneer in bringing feminist perspectives to bear on global environmental policy and analysis. Her 1993 book, Earth Follies, has become a classic in the field.
Alison Donnell: Quiet Revolutions
This talk offers a new reading of postcolonial women’s writings. The conventional model since the 1980s has been to emphasize issues of silence and invisibility, the desire for voice and narrative space, and self-representation as a form of empowerment and transformation. What is often eclipsed as a result is a valuable political ethic based on coalition and solidarity with oppressed and marginalized figures. By working across an expansive literary archive, stretching from Mary Prince’s slave narrative to more recent works by Miriama Ba, Bapsi Sidhwa, Edwidge Danticat and Shani Mootoo, Professor Donnell identifies an alternative framework for reading postcolonial women’s writing, presenting a new model of feminist criticism rooted in solidarity and coalitional ethics. Alison Donnell is reader in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary and Critical History and has been a Joint Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies since its founding in 1998.
Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power
This conversation, which took place on Grace Paley’s birthday, December 11, 2009, explores how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley’s life and work. A prolific writer, Paley’s fiction highlights the everyday struggles of women, what she calls “a history of everyday life.” In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women’s rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire. Speakers include: Beatrix Gates, poet and publisher of Grace Paley’s first book of poems; Yvette Christianse, poet and novelist; Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment, and Development; Nancy Kricorian, New York-based writer and activist, author of Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, and coordinator of the New York City chapter of CODEPINK Women for Peace; Amy Swerdlow, founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s; and Lucila Silva and Perla Placencia, members of the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF), an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color and community members in Manhattan Valley.