The Transnational Feminisms Initiative draws upon BCRW’s longstanding practice of joining scholarship and activism to connect the work of Barnard faculty and students with feminist scholars and activists around the world. Beginning with a proposal by Catherine Sameh in 2010, the Initiative attends to the realities of local, national, regional, and other kinds of boundaries while also trying to build larger networks, organizations, and movements. Sameh’s full proposal can be found here.
The project builds on faculty research in sites around the world, develops innovative curricula and methodologies in an age of global learning, and generates new scholar-activist collaborations.
Examples of these three tracks are as follows:
Faculty Research
Gender Justice and Neoliberal Transformations
A synthetic project analyzing connection among possibilities for building gender justice in current political and economic conditions with a research team working across sites ranging from New York City to Detroit, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Madrid and Amsterdam. Led by Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Sociology, Elizabeth Bernstein and BCRW Director, Janet Jakobsen.
Curricular and Methodological Innovation
Global Seminars
The global seminar series works to build more extensive intellectual and organizational connections between the Global Symposium host cities, sites of faculty research, and Barnard College. Seminars have included “Mumbai at Home and in the World: Gender, Sexuality, and the Postcolonial City,” focused on comparative perspectives between Mumbai and New York and working with the “Subaltern Urbanisms” research project, and “Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary African Contexts,” co-hosted with the African Gender Institute, for students who want to forge new linkages between their knowledges of global political change, gender and sexuality, and activism.
Scholar-Activist Collaborations
African Women’s Rights and Resilience
During the 2013-14 academic year, Barnard was proud to host Nobel Laureate and Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee as its inaugural Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice and a Transnational Fellow at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Students, faculty and visitors benefited from her presence on campus and attending her classes and lectures to hear her perspectives on social justice and human rights. One of the most exciting components of Gbowee’s residency was an innovative pedagogical collaboration between Gbowee and Tina Campt, Professor of Africana and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Co-Director of BCRW. Gbowee and Campt developed a distinctive adaptation of the WGSS Feminist Theory Colloquium that engaged Gbowee’s extensive network of activists, including Gloria Steinem and Abigail Disney. In March 2014, BCRW co-sponsored the African Women’s Rights and Resilience Symposium in celebration of International Women’s Day, which explored the situation of women in the Global South against the backdrop of women’s accomplishments around the world.
