Blog
Writing from our collaborators
Interfering 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,” […]
Read More“Don’t Blame the Media, Become the Media”: Feminist Remix as Utopian Practice
For those of us who identify as feminists, being a consumer of mass media – whether willingly or not – is an often painful, infuriating, and downright exhausting experience. The limited and limiting images of women can make a trip to the movies or a simple ride on the subway into a cause for distress. […]
Read MoreAnother World is Possible: Building the Ideal Community
The workshop “Another World is Possible: Creating Communities that Reinvent Ourselves as we Reinvent the World,” at The Scholar & Feminist 2013: Utopia, offered incredible insight into the process of creating a community based on ideas of equality and respect for diversity. Building utopia requires a complete transformation of the existing notions in society. The ultimate […]
Read MoreTransformational Learning at The Scholar and Feminist 2013
Everyone has had both challenging and positive experiences in the realm of education, from experiencing racism in the classroom to supportive professors. What allows for these positive experiences to take place? Dean Spade of Seattle University School of Law and activist Rickke Mananzala sought to answer this question during the Open Education workshop at The Scholar & Feminist 2013: Utopia conference. […]
Read MoreEngaging the Production of Violence
This post is part of a series of reflections on the interdisciplinary winter seminar, “Mumbai At Home and in the World: Gender, Sexuality and the Postcolonial City.” BCRW Associate Director Catherine Sameh introduced the seminar in part 1, BCRW Research Assistant Nicci Yin reflected on occupying space in an urban environment in part 2, and Liz Gipson […]
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