Podcasts
Domestic Work, Migration and Gender
Recorded Mar 9, 2011
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.
ListenThe Scholar and Feminist 2011: Simi Linton
Recorded Feb 26, 2011
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.
ListenThe Scholar & Feminist 2011: Aesthetics and Politics in Action
Recorded Feb 26, 2011
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.
ListenCarla Freccero: Carnivorous Virility
Recorded Feb 1, 2011
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.
ListenChristianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality
Recorded Oct 21, 2010
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.
ListenCreating Systemic Change at the Intersection of Economic and Reproductive Justice
Recorded Sep 22, 2010
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.
ListenReproductive Justice in Action
Recorded Mar 3, 2010
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.
ListenThe Scholar & Feminist 2010: Development and Sustainability
Recorded Feb 27, 2010
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.
ListenThe Scholar & Feminist 2010: Economic, Health and Social Justice
Recorded Feb 27, 2010
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.
ListenJoni Seager: Keynote Lecture from The Scholar & Feminist 2010
Recorded Feb 27, 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.
ListenAlison Donnell: Quiet Revolutions
Recorded Feb 16, 2010
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.
ListenGrace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power
Recorded Dec 11, 2009
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.
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