Archive
arts
Freedom Dreaming and Worldmaking: Tourmaline and Hope Dector on Marsha P. Johnson’s Inspiring Life
Oct 20, 2025
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
Oct 6, 2025
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 MoreSaul Williams on Black Experimentation, Fugitive Pedagogies, and the Art of Resistance
Saul Williams and Shana L. Redmond
Poet, musician, filmmaker, actor and intellectual Saul Williams discusses the relationships between aesthetic forms and political education in conversation with Dr. Shana Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference. Reflecting on practices of Black experimentation—in language, music, and film—this dialogue explores the various sites of enclosure and foreclosure, from the nation state to the university, that bear upon the present and what practices are necessary to enact more just futures.
Read MoreTrans*Revolutions Virtual Symposium
Elliot Montague, Emma Frankland, Texas Isaiah, Tourmaline, and Vick Quezada
#TransRevolutions Live captioning is available here. During the event, you can send questions for the Q&A by emailing bcrw@barnard.edu or via Twitter @bcrwtweets #TransRevolutions Trans*Revolutions is a virtual symposium featuring artist-activists whose work is inspired by and engaged in imagining trans* and genderqueer histories, performances, identities, and aesthetics. Elliot Montague (film), Emma Frankland (performance), Texas Isaiah […]
Read MoreDreams are Colder than Death: Screening & Talk with Arthur Jafa
Featuring Arthur Jafa, Christina Sharpe, Tourmaline, and Tavia Nyong'o.
Read MoreGloria Joseph and Naomi Jackson: Caribbean Feminisms on the Page
A conversation with Gloria Joseph and Naomi Jackson. Moderated by Kaiama L. Glover.
Read MoreTourmaline: Making a Way Out of No Way
Keynote address at The Scholar & Feminist Conference 41: Sustainabilities.
Read MoreBlack Light: Tom Lloyd, Lorraine O’Grady, and the Effect of Art Historical Disappearance
Krista Thompson
ABOUT THE EVENT Tom Lloyd was a black artist among the first wave working with light and electronic technologies in the 1960s. His early centrality in the mainstream 1960s New York art world is belied by the bare archival and material traces that remain of his work. Taking a cue from performance artist Lorraine O’Grady’s […]
Read MoreThe Worlds of Ntozake Shange
Kim F. Hall, Monica L. Miller, and Yvette Christiansë
“The Worlds of Ntozake Shange” highlights Shange’s centrality to black feminism and the continuing impact of her work both within and outside the academy. In addition to working as a poet, novelist, and choreographer, Shange created the choreopoem, a form that links the physicality of dancing and music to the written word. The contributors in this issue examine Shange’s continuing impact on literature, theatre, popular culture, feminist, afrodiasporic and queer movements, with many pointing to her linguistic innovations (for instance, her fluid movement across languages, prominent use of both slashes and lowercase letters) as tools that have proven vital to feminist practice. The “Worlds of Ntozake Shange” draws necessary attention to the fact that this artist has long been a creative force, providing new language and possibilities for both intellectual and artistic productions.
Read MoreJust Take the Mic: The Power of Feminist Comedy
Phoebe Robinson, Liz Miele, Emily Schorr Lesnick, Amanda Seales
To attend this panel, purchase Sunday Day Pass here. Just Take the Mic: The Power of Feminist Comedy explores the possibilities of and for feminist comedic performance. Since its founding in 1971, the Barnard Center for Research on Women has been at the forefront of feminist engagement. Our Center promotes women’s and social justice issues […]
Read MoreZines
Released Mar 6, 2015
(Dare to Use The F-Word, Episode 13) In this episode of Dare to Use the F-Word, Research Assistant Michelle Chen '15 interviews Barnard Zine Librarian Jenna Freedman and founder of As[I]Am Jordan Alam '13 on zines as a feminist project. The episode also features interviews with participants at the NYC Feminist Zine Fest 2014, held at Barnard College.
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