Barnard Center For Research On Women

How can activists use knowledge to advance their campaigns? How can scholars and activists work collaboratively to produce and promote knowledge that is grounded in feminist and social justice frameworks? Activists who have been able to produce and use knowledge to initiate change across numerous issues contribute to this conversation about the uses of knowledge in activist work. Panelists include Rinku Sen (Applied Research Center), Dean Spade '97 (University of Seattle School of Law), and Jamia Wilson (Women's Media Center). This discussion, moderated by Laura Flanders '85 (GRITtv), took place on the second day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Colleges and universities across the country are increasingly interested in adding opportunities for civic engagement to their curricula, seeking to expose their students to new ways of practicing and researching social justice. Educators from several institutions will look at the ways in which these projects can build feminist awareness and community on college campuses. Panelists include Dara J. Silberstein (SUNY Binghamton), Jerilyn Fisher (Hostos Community College), Leslie Simon (City College of San Francisco) and Stephanie Gilmore (Dickinson College). This discussion, moderated by Susannah Bartlow (Dickinson College), took place on the second day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

In "Forwarding Feminism," her keynote lecture at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, South African academic, activist, and writer Mamphela Ramphele offers an inspiring and thought-provoking vision for the future of feminism and activism. This lecture took place on the second day of Activism and the Academy, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

BCRW's commitment to bringing feminist scholars and activists together in conversation and collaboration has been at the center of our work for the past 40 years. Representatives from three organizations with whom we have recently partnered - the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Queers for Economic Justice, and the New York Women's Foundation - discuss the unique models of feminist action and knowledge that have been produced through BCRW's scholar-activist partnerships. Panelists include Ai-jen Poo (National Domestic Workers Alliance), Sydnie L. Mosley '07 (dancer, choreographer and teacher), Amber Hollibaugh (Queers for Economic Justice), and Ana Oliveira (New York Women's Foundation). This plenary, moderated by Janet Jakobsen (BCRW), took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Feminist scholars, activists, and practitioners across the Americas are challenging gendered hierarchies in their communities, nations, and region. Whether or not they explicitly identify as feminists, their work is transforming contemporary politics and cultural relations. Through the stories of Latin American feminist networks, women-led grassroots organizations, and lesbian collectives, this panel examines the transnational strategies employed by activists across the Americas. Panelists include Ximena Garcia Bustamante (New School for Social Research), Ariella Rotramel (Rutgers), Anahi Russo Garrido (Rutgers), and Sasha Taner (Rutgers). This discussion, moderated by Temma Kaplan (Rutgers), took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Over the past two decades, the archive has emerged as a central site of feminist knowledge production and activism. Feminist archives and special collections have been able to document activist movements and make previously obscured forms of knowledge visible. This panel brings together a group of feminist librarians, archivists, scholars, and activists to explore this archival turn in contemporary feminism. Panelists include Jenna Freedman (Barnard College), Alana Kumbier (Wellesley College) and Kate Eichhorn (The New School). This discussion, moderated by Emily Drabinski (Long Island University), took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Continuing education in the humanities is an extremely important, yet often overlooked subset of higher education. Over the years, BCRW has sought to support continued opportunities for feminist learning through a diverse series of course offerings. Current and past BCRW instructors, along with scholars of feminist literature, will discuss the value of intergenerational feminist education. Panelists include Leslie Calman, Heather Hewett and Stephanie Staal. This discussion, moderated by Lori Rotskoff, took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Gloria Anzaldua's groundbreaking volume Borderlands/La frontera juxtaposes poetry and prose, and research and personal narrative, forming a bridge between activism and scholarship. This panel looks at Anzaldua's work, along with the work of two border poets, Margaret Randall and Ruth Irupe Sanabria, to explore what poetry and other creative engagements can bring to activist practices. Panelists include Margaret Randall (poet, photographer, and activist), Ruth Irupe Sanabria (poet and activist), and Michelle Gonzalez (Bard College at Simon's Rock). This discussion, moderated by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez (Bard College at Simon's Rock), took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Writing, blogging, social networking, and other forms of media are vital channels of communication for feminist activists. Panelists Mandy Van Deven (activist and writer), Ileana Jimenez (blogger at FeministTeacher.com), Veronica Pinto (Hollaback!), and Susanna Horng (Girls Write Now) discuss their own media projects and how they have used new forms of communications to support and build their movements. This discussion, moderated by Courtney Martin (writer and editor at Feministing.com), took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Women's and gender studies programs have been an integral part of the feminist movement for the past four decades. Over the years, the field has grown and expanded - and so has the proliferation of other disciplines devoted to the study of intersectionality, including queer studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies. What are the challenges currently facing the fields of gender and sexuality studies? Panelists Kandice Chuh, Ann Pellegrini, and Sarita See reflect on the history and futures of the field in this discussion moderated by Lisa Duggan. This panel took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

In her keynote lecture at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, Alvarez discusses her latest intellectual and political project, the forthcoming co-edited anthology Translocalities/Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Americas. This lecture took place on the first day of Activism and the Academy, a two-day conference held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

BCRW Director Janet Jakobsen delivers opening remarks at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action. This two-day conference was held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

The inaugural event in BCRW's Salon series, this engaged dialogue brings together several prominent and influential scholars whose work explores how affect and emotion influence public life. Just as feminism has sought to identify the ways in which the personal and the political are linked, the study of 'public feelings' draws our attention to how and why feelings and emotion (assumed to be a private, personal experience) influence politics and notions of social belonging and intimacy. This conversation, moderated by BCRW Director and Professor of Women's Studies, Janet Jakobsen, focuses on how perceptions of citizenship and solidarity are often bound up in emotions - like optimism, rage, and disgust - and how feelings can govern policy and political debates. Panelists include Jose Munoz, Ann Pellegrini, Tavia Nyong'o, and Lauren Berlant.

In this year's Rennert Forum lecture, "Created in God's Image: Intersections of Judaism, Gender, and Human Rights," Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster '01 reflects on her work as a human rights activist, mobilizing the Jewish community on campaigns against US-sponsored torture and modern slavery. Rabbi Kahn-Troster has worked tirelessly to bring about change in US foreign and domestic policy and to educate the public about the reality of torture and detainee treatment as a moral issue. In organizing across lines of faith and politics, she explores questions of how Judaism reacts to extreme violations of human dignity, what it means to recognize the sacredness of the Other, and the imperative to remember the real faces lost behind headlines. Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster is Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, where she directs campaigns against state-sponsored torture and modern slavery. She was ordained in 2008 as a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was a stud

During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, a range of iconic female forms emerged to dominate the global pictorial landscape. Female athletes and adventurers, chorine stars, flappers, garconnes, Modern Girls, neue Frauen, suffragettes, and trampky were all facets of the dazzling and urbane New Woman who came to epitomize modern femininity in photographs and on film. This construct existed as a set of abstract ideals, even as it varied when translated across national contexts and through a range of key historical moments including First Wave feminism, colonialism, the First and Second World Wars, political revolutions, and the rise of modernism. This panel, moderated by art historian Linda Nochlin, examines the nuances of visual representations of this transgressive and border-crossing figure from her inception in the later nineteenth century to her full development in the interwar period and beyond. Panelists include Elizabeth Otto, Clare Rogan, Vanessa Rocco, and

This forum, organized by DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association and co-sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Barnard Women's Studies, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, engages scholars, policy advocates, activists, and allies about the situation of immigrant women domestic workers with the Philippines as a case study. The forum is moderated by Leah Obias, Catherine Sameh gives opening remarks, and the list of speakers and topics includes: Neferti Tadiar, Professor and Chair of Women's Studies at Barnard College, discussing globalization, migration and domestic work; Alexa Kasdan, Director of Research and Policy at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, discussing community participatory research and organizing work; Cecille Venzon, Member of the Board of Directors of DAMAYAN, giving a worker's testimonial; Terri Nilliasca, Activist and Student at CUNY Law Center, discussing power dynamics at the domestic workplace and the intersections of race, class, gender an

Simi Linton delivers opening remarks to the Heidi Latsky Dance Company's Performance of The GIMP Project at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2011, Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability, on February 26. Simi describes dance as the place where disability rights, disability culture and disability studies come together. She is introduced by Janet Jakobsen.

This discussion on Aesthetics and Politics in Action was the morning panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2011 - Movements: Poltics, Performance and Disability. This panel examines cultural, historical and transnational constructions of disability. Making connections between cultural production, performance, aesthetics, activism and scholarship, panelists explore the many contributions of disability activists to social justice. Following introductory remarks by Janet Jakobsen, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson moderates the discussion which features Carrie Sandahl, Alice Sheppard, Susan Schweik, and Nirmala Ervelles.

In this lecture, Professor Carla Freccero argues for a queering of temporality that would undo our nationally circumscribed and periodized fields of literary study in order to work through figures that haunt texts across historical eras. Her case study involves cynanthropy, the merger of human man and dog; it takes as its starting point the Columbian New World encounter, from reports of dog-headed cannibals to accounts of the devouring dog as the ubiquitous weapon of Spanish colonizers; and concludes with the attack on Diane Whipple by two Presa Canarios in San Francisco in 2001. This figure of carnivorous virility condenses in itself a whole series of New and Old World meanings, from companion to cannibal, primitive savage to savagely civilizational. Professor Freccero identifies the usefulness of alternative temporalities for understanding the historical and affective work such figures do and for the necessity of imagining agency, subjectivity, and social collectivity differently to account for such trans-s

This panel discussion moderated by Laura Flanders of GRITtv features Sylvia Henriquez (Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health), Lynn Paltrow (Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant Women), and Miriam Yeung (Executive Director, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum). The panel was part of the daylong conference Critical Intersections: Reproductive and Economic Justice sponsored by The New York Women's Foundation and BCRW.