Locations 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 and increasingly imperiled in the face of a shrinking academic job market; a neoliberalizing academy that treats students as consumers and scholarship as marketable commodities; and an overall geopolitical climate of surveillance, fear, violence and widening material disparities.

To mark the 20th anniversary of this foundational text, and the ongoing formation of the field it helped to launch, in 2013-14 Catherine Sameh and Attiya Ahmad brought together a group of junior scholars working across disciplines and regions with the pioneers of the field to explore how their often elided or marginalized work on transnational feminisms could help to analyze and respond to recent global transformations, such as the Arab Spring, the occupy movements, and other widespread protests aimed at transforming existing systems of governance, institutional and national. A day-long collaborative workshop encouraged scholars to share approaches and cross-pollinate ideas, and was followed by the public Scholar & Feminist conference. Participants intend to further develop their work in an upcoming issue of Scholar and Feminist Online.

Read the background sent to conference participants here

The Scholar & Feminist 2014: Locations of Learning

http://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/locations-of-learning-transnational-feminist-practices/

The “Locations of Learning” conference included scholarly panels building on the legacy of Scattered Hegemonies and a lunchtime session on Digital Engagement in Transnational Feminisms. Sessions covered: The Legacy of Scattered Hegemonies, Global Transformation, Critical Scholarship in Neoliberal Times, Building Interdisciplinary and Transregional Alliances, and Situating Transnational Feminism in a Changing Theoretical Landscape.

Tweets Using conference hashtag #sflocations:

Tweets about “#sflocations”

Organizers

• Catherine Sameh, Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Studies, University of California, Irvine. Former Associate Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.
• Attiya Ahmad, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, George Washington University.

Participants

• Abosede George, Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies, Barnard College. Professor George focuses on women’s history, urban history, the history of childhood in Africa, the history of gender and sexuality in African History and the history of development work in Africa.
• Harjant Gill, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Towson University. Gill’s interests are in gender, globalization ethnographic film and popular in India and South Asian Diaspora.
• Magdalena Grabowska, Professor of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. Grabowska’s research explores postcoloniality,  social-movements and identities of post-state colonialism.
• Maja Horn, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Cultures, Chair of the department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures, Barnard College. Horn’s studies focuses on Contemporay Caribbean Studies within the focus on literature, political culture and visual and performance arts.
• Neetu Khanna, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Southern California. Khanna’s studies focuses on Modern South Asian literatures, global marxisms, postcolonial literature and theory. literatures of colonization, aesthetics of affect, Transnational Feminisms and queer theory.
• Tate LeFevre, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Franklin and Marshall College. LeFevre’s work explores focuses on the way in which Konak youth imagine the meaning of indigenous identity and stake cultural political claims on the future in New Caledonia.
• Shayoni Mitra, Assistant Professor of  Theatre, Barnard College. Mitra focuses on the intersection of performance and politics by focusing her teaching on bridging the gap between the global North and South and discussing the histories of Western Realism with classical, folk, stylized, avant garde and improvized forms from around the world.
• Liz Montegary, Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook University. Montegary’s research and interests includes feminist and queer studies, Transnational American Studies, LGBT activist movements, the militarization of everyday life, mobility, the body, dis/abilty.
• Jennifer Nash, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.  Nash’s work is rooted in black feminism, black sexual politics, race, law, race and visual culture.
• Tami Navarro, Associate Director, Barnard Center for Research on Women, Barnard College. Tami Navarro’s research is about Neoliberalism,  Capital, Gender and Labor, Development, Identity Formation, Globalization/Transnationalism, Race/ Racialization and Ethnicity and Caribbean Studies.
• Sima Shakhsari Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Wellesley College . Shakhsari’s study focuses on the sexuality and diaspora in the Middle East.
• Netta Van Vilet, Visiting Faculty in the Department of Anthropology, Duke University and College of the Atlantic. Vilet’s work focuses on Feminist Theory, religious studies, postcoloniality.
• Neha Vora, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Lafayette College. Vora’s interests includes South Asian Diasporas, Gender and Ethnicity,  Neoliberalism, States, Migration, Feminist Theory, the Gulf Arab States, Globalized Higher Education and Indian Connectivities.
• Bianca Williams, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies,  University of Colorado at Boulder. Bianca Williams’s work focuses on theories of race, gender and African communities and the emotional aspects of being “Black” and a “woman” in Jamaica and the United States.