Blog
Writing from our collaborators
Freedom Dreaming and Worldmaking: Tourmaline and Hope Dector on Marsha P. Johnson’s Inspiring Life
Award-winning artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist Tourmaline has spent over two decades lovingly researching and preserving Marsha P. Johnson’s life. In two books published this past spring—MARSHA: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, the first comprehensive biography of Johnson, and a children’s book, One Day in June—Tourmaline provides a richly textured story of […]
Read More“Brown Sugar Makes the World Go ‘Round”: A Conversation with Kim F. Hall on The Sweet Taste of Empire
Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Africana Studies Kim F. 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. Hall explores how the unique […]
Read MoreBeyond the Shores: Tamara J. Walker on Black Americans Abroad
Barnard Professor of Africana Studies Tamara J. Walker is an experienced storyteller of elsewheres. As a historian she tells stories of the past; as a Latin Americanist she writes from outside the global north (her first book Exquisite Slaves (Cambridge University Press, 2017) examines the clothing of the enslaved in colonial Lima). As a lifelong […]
Read MoreA quantum life: Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Audre Lorde
Last December, Margot Kotler sat down with Alexis Pauline Gumbs to discuss her most recent book, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. They talked about the breadth of Lorde’s life and the need to think on a planetary scale, the collective work of autobiography, and the work of a poet in […]
Read MoreIt Has to Be Imperfect
An interview with Nina Sharma, author of The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown * Nina Sharma is a writer, performer, and adjunct professor of English at Barnard College. Her writing has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Literature, Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Margins, and Longreads. Last fall […]
Read MoreIf We Can Imagine a Feminist World, We Can Build One
A Conversation with Margo Okazawa-Rey and Elif Sarican, guest editors of “Rage, Struggle, Freedom,” a special issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online On December 4th, The Scholar and Feminist Online released its newest issue “Rage, Struggle, Freedom” guest edited by feminist scholars and activists Margo Okazawa-Rey and Elif Sarican. Okazawa-Rey and Sarican together make […]
Read MoreJina’s Uprising: A Feminist Look at Two Years of Struggle and Resistance, Developments and Dynamics
On the second anniversary of the “woman, life, freedom” uprising, Feminists for Jina, a transnational Iranian feminist network, held a panel discussion reflecting on the lessons and lasting impacts of this unprecedented, mass feminist revolt. While the events that precipitated the uprising are well known outside Iran, they nonetheless bear repeating because they crystallize the […]
Read MoreA View from Public Housing: Resident Histories, Perspectives and Hope
A View from Public Housing: Resident Histories, Perspectives and Hope When I was growing up there, we were proud to live in public housing. It was a great place to live. You got to really see a lot of family, community, playgrounds. It was so close to schools. Public housing is no different than […]
Read MoreArchitecture of Migration: An Interview with Anooradha Siddiqi
Anooradha Siddiqi is Assistant Professor of Architecture, Barnard College, and author of Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Duke University Press, 2024). Sabrina Salam (BC ’24) is a Research Assistant at BCRW. Sabrina Salam: What critical problem do you look at in this book? Anooradha Siddiqi: I look at architecture and migration […]
Read MoreImagining Collective Care in Our Future: A Conversation with Premilla Nadasen
Premilla Nadasen is a historian of social change. Nadasen’s work has focused on organizing among poor and working-class women of color and alternative labor movements in the US. Nadasen currently serves as the Anne Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College and Co-Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Care: The Highest […]
Read MorePolitical Origins: An Interview with Johanna Fernández
At the end of May, BCRW hosted its first Feminist Freedom School on the subject of feminist abolition. The Freedom School was facilitated by Sarah Haley, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, and co-organized by Premilla Nadasen, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College and Co-Director of BCRW. I joined with ten […]
Read MoreCollective Reconnection: An Interview with Sophie Lewis
Sophie Lewis came to speak at the BCRW Feminist Freedom School in June. She brought an extraordinarily calm and humble demeanor as she entered the classroom. Her arrival was eagerly awaited by participants of the freedom school as many were familiar with her book, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation (Verso Press, […]
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