Barnard Center for Research on Women

In this panel, young feminist activists discuss their areas of interest, what they see as the major challenges for feminist movements, how organizing today compares to that by previous generations, intersections between feminism and other approaches to social justice, and how to build coalitions that can enact structural change. Panelists include Dior Vargas, Sydnie Mosley '07, and Julie Zeilinger '15. The discussion also included Jessica Danforth, who is not included in the recording at her request. Dina Tyson '13 moderated the panel.

Sonia Pierre (1963-2011), mobilized communities in the Dominican Republic to advocate for citizenship and human rights for Dominicans of Haitian descent. As the director of Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitiana (MUDHA), she used legal challenges in domestic and international courts to defend the citizenship rights of first and second generation children born on Dominican soil. This panel highlights the activism of young women who are moving forward with Sonia Pierre's work on behalf of Dominicans of Haitian descent, and addresses the question of how international pressure impacts efforts by marginalized groups to demand recognition. Panelists include Manuela (Solange) Pierre, Sonia Pierre’s oldest daughter, and the founder and coordinator of the Dominican Network of Young African Descendants (Red Dominicana de Jóvenes Afrodescendientes); Ninaj Raoul, the Executive Director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees; Monisha Bajaj, Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College; Minerva Leticia Solange, daughter of Sonia Pierre; and Miriam Neptune (moderator), video producer and director of Birthright Crisis, an award-winning documentary depicting the cycle of deportation and violence faced by Dominicans of Haitian descent.

The 2012-13 Africana Distinguished Alumna Series honors one of Barnard’s most distinguished African American alumnae: Ntozake Shange '70. A playwright, poet, and novelist of startling originality, Shange is best known for her 1975 Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Following the screening of Tyler Perry’s acclaimed 2010 film version of the play, Ms. Shange speaks candidly with Soyica Diggs Colbert, assistant professor of English at Dartmouth College, and Monica Miller, associate professor of English at Barnard, about her groundbreaking work and its controversial adaptation to the screen.

Since visual images invoke the spectator's experience of unmediated access to the inner world of the subject, the evocative power of photographic images may readily reproduce forms of voyeurism. This under-theorizing becomes particularly problematic in projects that document the lives of migratory and marginalized women. Drawing on several decades of prior field research and documentary film projects, Professor Haaken presents a study carried out with women refugee and asylum-seekers in the UK. In discussing photographic images from the study, Haaken provides a framework for working through a series of ethical, political, and methodological dilemmas. She draws on psychoanalytic feminist theory, critical psychology, and participatory action research methods to argue for the importance of an approach to the visual that includes the dynamics of spectatorship as well as the dynamics of the research setting itself as an affectively rich and conflicted site of knowledge production.

Celebrating the release of The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard (Topside Press, 2012), four of the volume's contributors, Ryka Aoki, Imogen Binnie, Red Durkin, and Donna Ostrowsky come together to read from their work. Following the readings, the writers discuss future of literature, the complex ways that literary trans narratives will evolve in years to come, and their own stories of characters navigating relationships, gender, family, work, race, and more. This panel, co-sponsored by Barnard Library, Topside Press, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, is moderated by Reina Gossett.

Some writers have celebrated a new biological citizenship arising from individuals' unprecedented ability to manage their health at the molecular level. In this year’s Helen Pond McIntyre '48 lecture, Dorothy Roberts examines the role of race and gender in the construction of this new biocitizen in light of the current expansion of race-based, reproductive, and genetic biotechnologies along with neoliberal reliance on private resources for people's welfare. Roberts argues that science, big business, and politics are converging to support a molecularized understanding of race, health, and citizenship that ultimately helps to preserve inequities. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, Dorothy Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics. She is the Penn Integrates Knowledge/George A. Weiss University Professor, the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and Professor of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania.

Feminist writers discuss what the new digital landscape means for them - how to deal with a constant barrage of critiques and suggestions, how race and gender impact the ways communities form online, the ethics of live-tweeting academic conferences, and more. From #twittergate to the necessary limitations of identity in digital networks, these academics and journalists take a fresh look at the complicated practice of performing feminist labor online. Panelists include Brittney Cooper, Gail Drakes, Dana Goldstein, Courtney Martin, and Renina Jarmon in this discussion moderated by Jonathan Beller.

Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a legal anthropologist specializing in Islamic law, gender, and development. She is currently Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, University of London. In this lecture, Dr. Mir-Hosseini explores the Islamic feminist movement's potential for changing the terms of debates over Islam and gender, arguing that the real battle is between patriarchy and despotism on the one hand, and gender equality and democracy on the other.

The second event in BCRW's newly inaugurated Salon Series features Karla FC Holloway, Tina Campt, Farah Griffin, Saidiya Hartman, Rebecca Jordan-Young, and Alondra Nelson. These scholars, whose expertise lies at the cross-section of law, race, gender, and bioethics, respond to Karla FC Holloway’s new book, Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics, an important and groundbreaking work that examines instances where medical issues and information that would usually be seen as intimate, private matters are forced into the public sphere, calling for a new cultural bioethics that attends to the complex histories of race, gender, and class in the US.

How does a shift from focusing on the 'autonomous and independent subject' to a framework of shared vulnerability transform intellectual, legal, and activist terrains? This interdisciplinary panel explores how our ideas of personhood, the state, politics, organizing, religion, consciousness, arts, and ethics change when vulnerability becomes the lens through which we examine them, focusing particularly on relationships of interdependence and structural inequality. Panelists include Martha Albertson Fineman, Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, Colin Dayan, and Ilaria Vanni. This discussion, moderated by Elizabeth Castelli, took place at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2012, Vulnerability: The Human and the Humanities.

BCRW Acting Director Elizabeth Castelli delivers opening remarks at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2012, Vulnerability: The Human and the Humanities.

Advice about diet and health is extraordinarily controversial for reasons of science and politics. Human nutritional science is difficult to conduct and interpret. Advice about what to eat affects the ability of food companies to sell products. The result is cacophony in the marketplace and unnecessary confusion about dietary matters. Will better science solve this problem? Does the food industry have a role to play in promoting healthful food choices? Or are food companies analogous to cigarette companies in the way they deal with nutrition advocacy? Food expert Marion Nestle addresses such questions through relevant examples in this presentation. Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, which she chaired from 1988-2003. She is also Professor of Sociology at NYU and Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She is the author of three prize-winning books: Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health; Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety; and What to Eat. She also has written two books about pet food, Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine and Feed Your Pet Right (with Malden Nesheim). Her most recent book, released in March 2012, is Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (also with Dr. Nesheim).

The recently published anthology Voices of A Women's Health Movement (Seven Stories Press, 2012), co-edited by women's health advocate Barbara Seaman (1935-2008) and her longtime collaborator Laura Eldridge, brings together an essential collection of essays, interviews, and commentary by leading activists, writers, doctors and sociologists on topics ranging across reproductive rights, sex and orgasm, activism, motherhood, and birth control. In this panel discussion, some of the book's contributors discuss the rich history of this movement and its continued significance in struggles for reproductive health today. Panelists include Laura Eldridge '01, Helen Lowery, Lauren Porsch '01, Leonore Tiefer, and Irene Xanthoudakis '01. This discussion took place on February 15, 2012 at Barnard College in New York City.

How much do you know about the food you eat? Food production and the politics surrounding it have an enormous impact on our environment and economy. In recent years, scientists and activists have raised concerns about the sustainability and security of our food systems here in the US and around the world, but food has always been a driving force in international and domestic policy. Barnard faculty members Kim F. Hall, Deborah Valenze, Paige West, and Hilary Callahan engage in an interdisciplinary conversation about the past and present social, geopolitical, rhetorical, and environmental factors that influence how food - including items as seemingly ordinary as sugar, coffee, milk, and corn - shapes culture and politics in this discussion moderated by Elizabeth Castelli.

Since the women's health movement blossomed in the 1970s, there has been an ever-increasing trend toward examining all aspects of human health for evidence of sex differences. But some of the movement's major achievements - such as a federal mandate to collect and analyze data by sex in all health research - may paradoxically turn out to be obstacles for understanding health differences between and within sex/gender groups. Building on her earlier work in Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences and using examples from both physical and mental health research, this 2011 Silver Science lecture by Rebecca Jordan-Young reviews some basic questions about measurement in "sex-specific" medicine that could revolutionize the field and yield research and clinical practice that is actually far more specific and scientific than the current approach. What kind of variable is "sex," and can it be measured separately from "gender"? When we have information on specific biological mechanisms underlying health differences, what does the variable "sex" add to our analyses? Introduced by BCRW Acting Director Elizabeth Castelli, Rebecca Jordan-Young delivered this lecture on October 11, 2011.

From writing new constitutions to serving in local and national governance to sustaining NGOs and grassroots organizations to making policy changes, women and feminist groups in Africa are doing the difficult work of pushing local, state and international bodies to implement and guarantee gender equality and justice at every level. A group of scholars and activists draw on their experience in multiple regions of Africa, discussing how women are participating in the rebuilding of their societies - whether in post-conflict contexts or in times of deep political transformation during revolutions, post- revolutionary periods and transitions to democracy. Panelists include Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia University), Rabab El Mahdi (American University in Cairo), Jane Bennett (African Gender Institute), and Penelope Andrews (CUNY School of Law). This discussion, moderated by Rosalind Morris (Columbia University), 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.

Does a feminist perspective limit researchers' abilities to see and interpret empirical realities? What happens when these perspectives clash with the reality of field observations? A group of ethnographers discuss how their feminist perspectives can both limit and enhance their ability to analyze power structures and evaluate social change. Panelists include Orit Avishai (Fordham University) and Lynne Gerber (University of California, Berkeley). This discussion, moderated by Margot Weiss (Wesleyan University), took place on the second 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.

What does it mean to be an activist researcher? What are some of the challenges of conducting research about social movements and within activist communities? Drawing on ethnographic and teaching experiences, panelists discuss their research on different communities and social movements, and how their roles as activist researchers affect this work. Panelists include Roberta Villalon (St. John's University), Jennifer Rogers (Long Island University), Nikki McGary (University of Connecticut), Barbara Gurr (University of Connecticut), and Kathleen Coll (Stanford University). This discussion, moderated by Nancy Naples (University of Connecticut), took place on the second 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 are experiencing the effects of the economic downturn and our political climate in numerous ways. This panel of students and faculty discuss how activists on their campuses are working to combat budget cuts and the undermining of the public sector, provide alternatives to neoliberal restructuring in higher education, and fight against racism and gender inequities. Panelists include Abigail Boggs (University of California, Davis), Debanuj Dasgupta (Ohio State University), Stephanie Luce (Murphy Institute, CUNY), Sandra K. Soto (University of Arizona), and Jesse Kadjo (Loyola University). This discussion, moderated by Catherine Sameh (BCRW), took place on the second 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.

What types of projects are possible when scholars and activists work together? Scholars in the Gender Studies Program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have formed partnerships with activist groups to address issues like state oppression and violence, struggles for land rights and indigenous rights, and gender equity both within the University and in the community at large. Scholar and activist participants in these projects discuss how they've combined traditional academic tools with new ways of intervention to create change. Panelists include Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius, Rian Lozano de la Pola, Lorena Wolffer and Helena Lopez. This discussion, moderated by Margaret Cerullo, 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.

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 student activist and leader. She is a noted speaker, teacher, and writer on Judaism and human rights. Her writing has appeared in Sh'ma; Conservative Judaism; several anthologies, including the recent Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Social Justice, and on the web. Rabbi Kahn-Troster was also a 2009-2010 writing fellow for the American Jewish World Service. She serves on the boards of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Hazon, a Jewish environmental organization. Her lecture is introduced by Elizabeth Castelli.

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 Kristine Harris.

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 and immigration; and Linda Oalican, Program Coordinator of DAMAYAN, offering concluding remarks on building a comprehensive migrant domestic workers movement. Grace Chang, who participated in the forum via Skype, could not be included in this podcast due to sound quality issues.

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-species becomings. Carla Freccero is professor of Literature, Feminist Studies, and History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, where she has taught since 1991. Trained in continental Renaissance Studies, she is the author of Father Figures: Genealogy and Narrative Structure in Rabelais; Popular Culture: An Introduction; and Queer/Early/ Modern, in addition to essays on early modern and postmodern literature and culture, feminist and queer theory and criticism, psychoanalysis and animal studies. She is coeditor, with Aranye Fradenburg, of Premodern Sexualities, and currently at work on a book about human and non-human animal being titled Animate Figures. Her lecture is introduced by Janet Jakobsen.

Focusing specifically on sexuality, the panelists discuss the ways in which transnational and non-governmental Christian organizations have an impact on legal and social policies in different areas where Christians may comprise a small minority or a larger percentage of the population. In addition, sexuality continues to rankle and even divide Christian churches themselves, as evidenced by the recent tensions in the Anglican Communion over LGBT clergy members. This panel explores debates about sexuality within Christian churches and the global reach of Christian claims about sexuality. Panelists include Jordan Alexander Stein, Ju Hui Judy Han, Eng-Beng Lim and Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and the panel is moderated by Elizabeth Castelli.

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.

This panel discussion features a group of reproductive justice activists and birth doulas who work across the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and women's health, connecting the traditional reproductive rights movement with new social justice activism that considers the complete physical, political, and economic well-being of girls and women. Panelists include Aisha Domingue, doula coordinator at the Brooklyn Young Mothers Collective; Mary Mahoney, assistant director of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Doula Project; Lauren Mitchell, health educator and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Doula Project; and Miriam Perez, founder and sole blogger at RadicalDoula.com and editor at Feministing.com. The discussion is moderated by Lucy Trainor.

Janet Jakbosen moderates this discussion on Development and Sustainability, the second panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, "Feminism and Climate Change." Panelists include Rachel Harris, Susan Shaw, Marcela Vasquez-Leon and Eleanor Sterling.

Janet Jakbosen introduces Anene Ejikeme who moderates this discussion on Economic, Health and Social Justice, the first panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, "Feminism and Climate Change." Panelists include Nancy Biberman, Laila Iskandar Kamel, Peggy Shepard and Winona LaDuke.

Joni Seager delivered the morning keynote address at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, "Feminism and Climate Change." Already among the most vulnerable populations worldwide, women and other marginalized groups have been the most acutely affected by the instabilities produced by climate change. Issues such as water scarcity, drought, and other environmental problems threaten the world's food supply, making it more difficult for disadvantaged groups to obtain the basic necessities of life. Increased temperatures and more intense weather patterns raise the likelihood of illness and disease, especially among the poor. Diminishing resources, known to increase conflict and war, are leading to greater numbers of "climate refugees" and displaced people. In all of these situations, women are disproportionately affected by the dangers that climate change poses to our world. Joni Seager is a scholar and activist in feminist geography, international women's studies, and global environmental policy. She is the author of 10 books, and more than 3 dozen reports, articles, and chapters in books. In the environmental field, she was an early pioneer in bringing feminist perspectives to bear on global environmental policy and analysis. Her 1993 book, Earth Follies, has become a classic in the field.

This talk offers a new reading of postcolonial women's writings. The conventional model since the 1980s has been to emphasize issues of silence and invisibility, the desire for voice and narrative space, and self-representation as a form of empowerment and transformation. What is often eclipsed as a result is a valuable political ethic based on coalition and solidarity with oppressed and marginalized figures. By working across an expansive literary archive, stretching from Mary Prince's slave narrative to more recent works by Miriama Ba, Bapsi Sidhwa, Edwidge Danticat and Shani Mootoo, Professor Donnell identifies an alternative framework for reading postcolonial women's writing, presenting a new model of feminist criticism rooted in solidarity and coalitional ethics. Alison Donnell is reader in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary and Critical History and has been a Joint Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies since its founding in 1998.

This conversation, which took place on Grace Paley's birthday, December 11, 2009, explores how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights the everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history of everyday life." In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire. Speakers include: Beatrix Gates, poet and publisher of Grace Paley's first book of poems; Yvette Christianse, poet and novelist; Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment, and Development; Nancy Kricorian, New York-based writer and activist, author of Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, and coordinator of the New York City chapter of CODEPINK Women for Peace; Amy Swerdlow, founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s; and Lucila Silva and Perla Placencia, members of the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF), an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color and community members in Manhattan Valley. This event was co-sponsored by the Columbia Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWAG).

Catherine Waldby is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Sydney, Australia. In this lecture, delivered on November 6, 2009 at Barnard College, Professor Waldby explores the emerging tensions between women's voluntary (public good) donation of reproductive tissues for stem cell research and the increasing resort to transactional forms of tissue procurement, for example egg sharing and egg vending. She locates this tension in both a feminist biopolitical analysis and in the broader dynamics of the global bioeconomy.

Introduced by Janet Jakobsen, Saba Mahmood delivered the lecture, "The Politics of Freedom: Geopolitics, Minority Rights and Gender" on October 5, 2009 at Barnard College. Originally titled "Should Feminist Ethics Matter to Religious Politics?" Mahmood's talk marked the sixth annual Helen Pond McIntyre '48 lecture. Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Mahmood is an expert on issues of secularism, gender, and modernity within the context of Islamist movements in the Middle East and South Asia. In this lecture, she reflects on why ethical practice and forms of embodiment matter to questions of feminist politics and analysis. By engaging some common misreadings of her 2005 book Politics of Piety, Mahmood urges feminist scholars to critically re-think the normative status accorded to secular conceptions of the self and body in contemporary debates about religion.

Introduced by Christia Mercer, Eileen O'Neill presented closing remarks, entitled "The History of Women," at "Women, Philosophy and History: A Conference in Celebration of Eileen O'Neill '75." This two-day conference continued the groundbreaking work of Eileen O'Neill by examining the standard narrative of the history of philosophy from a feminist perspective. O'Neill's pioneering scholarship has brought to light the texts and ideas of women in the early modern period, and demonstrated the substantial contributions they made to philosophy. Her work has encouraged the analysis of thinkers as diverse as Marie de Gournay, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anna Maria van Schurman, Mary Astell, Emilie du Chatelet, and Damaris Masham. It has also challenged philosophers to reconsider methodological assumptions that have hidden these women and their works from view. The eminent international scholars gathered for this conference will continue this exploration and discuss the methodological, pedagogical, and philosophical implications of O'Neill's work. The conference also celebrates the impact of O'Neill's commitment to women in philosophy more generally.