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February 27–28, 2026 • 7:00 pm
Event Oval and Barnard Hall
Keynote by Judith Butler, Performance by Toshi Reagon
For half of a century, The Scholar and Feminist Conference has provided a mutually activating space for scholars, activists, and artists to confront the most pressing issues at any given moment. Defining scholarship as for activism from the very beginning, the conference has with unflagging regularity “met the moment” with intersectional feminist knowledge and action to inspire and build a robust response to contemporary crises. In many ways, the conference has grown up alongside academic feminism itself, yet, rather than uncritically mirror this history, it has consistently pushed back against feminism’s institutionalization. The conference highlights provocations, controversies, foundational gaps, and struggles that both cement its field-forming position and trouble a feminist progress narrative.
The Herb Alpert Center, Harlem School of the Arts
Dylan Rodríguez and Ezekiel Dixon-Román
Organized on the occasion of the centennial of the decolonial thinker Frantz Fanon, Freedom and Insurgence brings together Dylan Rodríguez and Ezekiel Dixon-Román for a conversation about capacious and generative approaches to mass intellectuality. The speakers approach the global legacies of Fanon’s thought on ‘archives of the possible,’ which illuminate approaches to the problem of democratic education and the crisis of the university in our times.
August 19, 2025 • 4:00 pm
BCRW Conference Room, Milstein 614
Milisuthando Bongela and Amelia Herbert
MILISUTHANDO is a deeply intimate portrait of filmmaker, writer and poet Milisuthando Bongela’s youth in South Africa. The self-titled documentary explores love, friendship and belonging in a South Africa stratified by racism, proving that only if we understand its tentacles, can we begin to extricate ourselves from its clutches.
Online
Kim Hall, Patricia A. Matthew, Debapriya Sarkar, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, and Jennifer Morgan; moderated by Tapiwa Gambura
Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Africana Studies Kim 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.
April 8, 2026 • 6:30 pm
Steven Watson and Tourmaline
For over forty years, cultural historian Steven Watson has documented the stories and artwork at the leading edge of artistic and cultural movements, including the movement for queer and trans liberation. Working in collaboration with filmmaker William Markarian-Martin, Steven recently launched Artifacts, making his collection of rare, firsthand accounts from pioneers such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Holly Woodlawn, and many others accessible to students, researchers, and anyone interested in connecting to queer and trans history. Watson’s archival collection foregrounds the importance of engaging with and animating trans and queer histories in order to combat the present-day erasure of trans lives.
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College
Darlène Dubuisson, Prisca Gayles, Amelia Simone Herbert, and Maricarmen Hernandez
Join us for an engaging joint-book discussion with Professors Darlène Dubuisson (University of California - Berkeley) and Prisca Gayles (University of Nevada - Reno) as they explore the intersecting themes of their recent books, Reclaiming Haiti’s Futures and Pain into Purpose.