Transnational Feminisms
Transnational Feminisms is an initiative that draws upon BCRW’s longstanding practice of joining scholarship and activism, in this instance, connecting the work of Barnard staff, faculty, and students with feminist scholars and activists around the world. The project has developed innovative curricula and methodologies of study in an age of global learning, and generates scholar-activist projects ranging from arts to direct service resources. Founded by former BCRW Associate Director Catherine Sameh (Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of California, Irvine) and continued by succeeding Associate Director Tami Navarro (Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies, Drew University), it is now led by BCRW Senior Associate Director Miriam Neptune.
Projects and Working Groups
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees
BCRW’s Transnational Feminisms Initiative continues our collaboration with Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, a Brooklyn-based organization that has been working for over thirty years to respond to the needs of Haitian refugees and immigrants fleeing persecution. The organization combines direct service, organizing, and political education in the movement to defend Black migrants, stop anti-Black deportation, […]
Read MoreTheater and Sex Work: VAMP’s Performance as Resistance
Vaishya Anyay Mukti Parishad (Sex Workers Free from Injustice), also known as VAMP, is a collective of sex-workers in Sangli, a small Indian border town on the commercial trucking routes between the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Working since 1996 with the not-for-profit organization SANGRAM (founded 1992), VAMP has been a vocal and effective organizer around […]
Read MoreGender Justice & Neoliberal Transformations Working Group
This working group undertakes multi-sited, collaborative research to contribute to more just social relations. Given the centrality of gender and sexuality to both state formation and contemporary operations of statecraft, we argue that this engagement is crucial to theorizing neoliberalism, and particularly so in relation to transformations in the welfare state, the feminization of labor, and the increase in affective labor.
Read MoreBirthright Crisis
In September 2013, the Dominican Republic passed TC168/13, a law that permanently annulled the citizenship of children born to “undocumented parents,” going back to 1929. This law directly impacted the children of Haitian immigrants who have been brought into to the Dominican Republic as laborers for the past 80 years, a practice initiated by the […]
Read MoreLocations of Learning: Transnational Feminist Practices
In 1994, Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan published the landmark Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practice. The work marked a pivotal moment in the development of transnational feminisms with its examination of the circulation of ideas, people, capital, goods, and socio-political movements across different spatial and temporal boundaries. Today, transnational feminist work is increasingly important […]
Read MoreIntersections of Queer Studies and Religion
Intersections of Queer Studies and Religion is part of a larger transnational project, Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular, and Queer Perspectives. This project was initiated in 2011 by Professor Anne-Marie Korte at Utrecht Univesrity and supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NOW).
Read MoreVideos
Courses
Barbados: Engaging Caribbean Development
About Syllabus Faculty Profile About CIGAD About This course is an exploration of different ways of conceptualizing the relationships between gender and labor over time, including critiques linking gendered labor to race and class. Grounded primarily in ethnography and political economy, we will look at some of the changes and continuities in the relationship between gender and forms of […]
Read MoreCape Town: The Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary African Contexts
This course is designed to introduce Barnard College students to research possibilities in South Africa and to experience transnational feminist pedagogies in practice. Participants concentrate on the politics of gender and sexuality in contemporary South Africa and in its relations with its neighbors.
Read MoreMumbai at Home and in the World: Gender, Sexuality, and the Postcolonial City
About Syllabus Photos and Videos Faculty Profiles About In keeping with its commitment to scholarly and pedagogical excellence in an era of new global affiliations and exchange, Barnard College held its inaugural interdisciplinary Winter Seminar: “Mumbai At Home and In the World” in Mumbai from January 9 to 16, 2013. The goal of the project […]
Read MoreCave Hill: Women and Global Markets: A View from the Caribbean
In July 2015, BCRW Associate Director Tami Navarro traveled to the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill as part of BCRW’s Transnational Feminisms Initiative in partnership with colleagues in the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the Cave Hill campus.
Read MoreAfrican Women’s Rights and Resilience
Course Description Course Materials Student Reflections Videos Related Events Collective Bibliography Co-Sponsors Course Description African Women’s Rights and Resilience Tina Campt and Leymah Gbowee, Instructors As detailed in the syllabus included on this site, Part One of the course, ‘Theorizing Black and Brown Bodies’ focused on feminist theories of the body, with particular emphasis theorizing race, gender and sexuality as they […]
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