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Writing from our collaborators
“Purely Aesthetic?” An Introduction to “No Such Thing as Neutral”
In November of last year, well respected post-modern choreographer Deborah Hay presented Blues for MoMA’s dance series, “Some sweet day.” For this piece, Hay divided the dancers into two casts: the blue whites and the blue blacks. The blue whites, comprised exclusively of white dancers, were instructed to stand still in quiet observation, while the blue blacks, […]
Read MoreFair Labor Standards Act Helps Improve Lives of Home Health Aides
A predominately female and minority workforce has finally gained protection under federal labor lawsthat has been ensured to other factions of the workforce for decades. The Obama Administration announced in September that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which won’t take effect until January 1, 2015, will now entitle most direct care workers (health workers, personal […]
Read MoreReflections on Queer Dreams and Nonprofit Blues
Last week, I attended the Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues conference held by BCRW and the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. As I moved from packed room to packed room, I was fortunate to feel comfortable in a space that reminded me of the college classrooms I left behind only a few months […]
Read MoreOne Stop Domestic Violence Shelters: Morocco and South Africa
Over the past couple of months, I have had the opportunity to visit several organizations working to end domestic violence in South Africa and Morocco. In both countries, the organizations that struck me the most are those that are following a “one stop” model for the services they provide, which means that they aim to […]
Read MoreInterfering with the Status Quo: A Radical Documentation of History
This week I took some time off from archiving here at BCRW to visit the Interference Archive, an activist collection located in Gowanus, Brooklyn that is open to the public. The high-ceilinged industrial space houses a wide range of visually gripping materials on historical and contemporary social movements. Recently featured in the New York Times, the collection […]
Read MorePlan C: Why We Need a New Way to Talk About Birth Control
In the last few years, the topics of sexuality, birth control, and abortion have been making headlines in the mainstream media. Fiercely debated, hotly contested and often misrepresented, facts about women’s health are so often obscured by moral judgment and urban legend. This past Thursday, the New York Times front page featured an article entitled […]
Read MoreBCRW Presents: The BCRW Ephemeral Archive (A Sneak Preview)
During my post as research assistant at the BCRW for the past couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity to delve into one of the best hidden historical collections on campus: the BCRW archive. The library at 101 Barnard Hall is home to a wide-ranging collection of ephemeral feminist documents, mainly materials from the 1980s and […]
Read MoreReflections in Justice: The Trayvon Martin Protests
Today I would like to share my thoughts on the protests that took place yesterday in Harlem and Union Square in New York City. Although there were many, these were the two I chose to participate in. I did this for two reasons, 1) to be in the presence of like minds who shared the pain and […]
Read MoreTo the Beat of My Own Drum: Why Gender Amplified Matters to Me
“Is this a gift for someone?” I was posed this question by a sales associate at a music supply store in 2008, while looking to purchase some Vic Firth American Jazz Drumsticks at the recommendation of my drum teacher. At the time, I had been playing drums and percussion for six years and wanted to start playing […]
Read MoreRepresentation, Community, Failure: Wildness & Utopia
At this year’s Scholar & Feminist Conference, “Utopia,” I looked forward to to seeing Wu Tsang and Roya Rastegar’s Wildness, a film that brings together my two interests, art and gender. The film, which I had first heard of in an art museum context (Tsang was involved in the New Museum Triennial and Whitney Biennial in 2012), chronicles the story of […]
Read MorePrison Abolition: Utopian Ideal or Emerging Reality?
BCRW’s Scholar & Feminist conference on Utopia featured a workshop with the activist and writer Reina Gossett, contributor to Captive Genders: Trans Embodiement & The Prison Industrial Complex whose work at New York’s Sylvia Rivera Law Project centers on providing services to low-income queer and transgender people. If the packed-to-the-brim classroom was any indication of the pertinence of the issue at hand, […]
Read MoreBeyond Food Fights
BCRW’s 2013 Scholar and Feminist Conference on “Utopia” created a space for its attendees to take our desires seriously and to imagine better outcomes. A broad array of topics were covered, from poverty, to media and pop culture, to food justice. I attended the workshop on the latter, entitled “Beyond Food Fights: Re-Imagining Food Justice,” […]
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