Nadia Abu El-Haj
Professor, Department of Anthropology, Barnard College
Nadia Abu El-Haj is professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies. She is the author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (2012), both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Nadia Abu El-Haj
Professor, Department of Anthropology, Barnard College
Nadia Abu El-Haj is professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies. She is the author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (2012), both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Abu El-Haj's work straddles the disciplines of anthropology and history of science. Concerned most generally with the relationships among scientific practices, social imaginaries and political regimes, she has examined the work of specific historical sciences within the context of their own historical and disciplinary conditions of possibility. In turn, Abu El-Haj has sought to understand how the epistemological commitments and empirical facts (and “things”) presupposed and generated by those disciplines have shaped the historical and political “common-sense” of a settler-nation, the racial imaginary of a national-/diasporic politics, and particular understandings and practices of the self. Her two books to date have focused on historical sciences (Israeli archaeology, and genetic history), and she is currently working on the field of military psychiatry, exploring the complex ethical and political implications of shifting psychiatric and public understandings of the trauma of soldiers. Provisionally titled, The Ethics of Trauma: Moral Injury, Combat, and U.S. Empire, this book examines the myriad forms and legacies of violence that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have unleashed, and how it is that so many of their attendant horrors remain hidden in plain sight.
Working Group Affiliation
Vanessa Agard-Jones
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Vanessa Agard-Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, where she maintains affiliations with the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, the Center for Science and Society, the Earth Institute, and the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. At its most expansive, Agard-Jones’ work asks how coloniality is made material: in social forms, in human and nonhuman bodies, and in the landscapes in which we live.
Vanessa Agard-Jones
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
Vanessa Agard-Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, where she maintains affiliations with the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, the Center for Science and Society, the Earth Institute, and the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. At its most expansive, Agard-Jones’ work asks how coloniality is made material: in social forms, in human and nonhuman bodies, and in the landscapes in which we live. With a focus on Black life in the Atlantic world, she conducts historical and ethnographic research on racialization, environmental degradation and the politics of gender and sexuality. In Body Burdens: Toxic Endurance and Decolonial Desire in the French Atlantic (in preparation), Agard-Jones reframes the concept of body burden to account for the accretion of toxicities in Martinique, a French territory in the Caribbean. Focused on material exposures to a pesticide called kepone/chlordécone and on immaterial exposures to racism, sexism, and homophobia, Body Burdens asks how contemporary debates about sovereignty on the island are articulated through the prism of ideas about porosity and contamination. Agard-Jones is a member of the Social Text Collective, Scholars for Social Justice and serves on the editorial boards of PoLAR: the Political and Legal Anthropology Review and Environment and Society: Advances in Research.
Working Group Affiliations
Black Atlantic Ecologies, Project Director
Trevor Corson
Department of English, Columbia University
Trevor Corson is the author of two books, including the worldwide popular-science bestseller The Secret Life of Lobsters. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Science Writing and he was managing editor of the literary magazine Transition when it won three consecutive Alternative Press Awards for International Reporting. He has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other publications.
Trevor Corson
Department of English, Columbia University
Trevor Corson is the author of two books, including the worldwide popular-science bestseller The Secret Life of Lobsters. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Science Writing and he was managing editor of the literary magazine Transition when it won three consecutive Alternative Press Awards for International Reporting. He has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other publications.
Trevor began his career in writing as an editorial assistant at The Atlantic, and went on to serve for three years as the managing editor of the literary journal Transition, published by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. During Trevor’s tenure at Transition the journal won three consecutive Alternative Press Awards for International Reporting and was nominated for a National Magazine Award in General Excellence. An essay Trevor wrote for Transition on the science and spirituality of brain death and organ transplantation, titled “The Telltale Heart,” was named a Notable Essay of the Year by Best American Essays.
Trevor teaches writing at Columbia University in New York City, where he co-directs the American Studies course track in the undergraduate writing program in the Department of English, and where he is an adjunct professor in the graduate program in creative writing in the School of the Arts. In the past he has been a lecturer in the graduate program in science journalism at Boston University, a visiting writer in the M.F.A. program at the University of Memphis, a lecturer at The New School, and a faculty member at Brooklyn Friends School. He has taught writing workshops at the Key West Literary Seminar and the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University.
Working Group Affiliation
Katherine Franke
Professor, Department of Law, Columbia Law School
Katherine Franke is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and is the faculty director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, a member of the Steering Committee for the Center for the Study of Social Difference, and an Affiliated Faculty member for the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.
Katherine Franke
Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Katherine Franke is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and is the faculty director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, a member of the Steering Committee for the Center for the Study of Social Difference, and an Affiliated Faculty member for the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.
Her most recent book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality, NYU Press, 2015, considers the costs of winning marriage rights for same sex couples today and for African-Americans at the end of the Civil War. Franke was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to undertake research for Wedlocked. In addition to her work at the Law School, she works regularly in Palestine, most recently serving as an academic mentor for the human rights faculty at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem, and sits on the steering committee of the Academic Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. She also chairs the board of directors of the Center for Constitutional Rights, based in New York City.
Before coming to the Law School, Franke was an associate professor at Fordham Law School and the University of Arizona College of Law. From 1990 to 1991, she was the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. Prior to that, she worked for the New York City Commission on Human Rights and founded the AIDS and Employment Project.
Working Group Affiliations
Maja Horn
Associate Professor, Spanish & Latin American Cultures, Barnard College
Maja Horn specializes in contemporary Caribbean cultures with a focus on literature, visual and performance art, and political culture. She is the author of Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature (University Press of Florida in 2014) and is currently completing a second monograph on queer Dominican literature, visual and performance art. She has also published on Latin American and Caribbean arts for various Dominican and U.S. art magazines and is currently serves on the editorial committee for the journal Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.
Maja Horn
Associate Professor, Spanish & Latin American Cultures, Barnard College
Maja Horn specializes in contemporary Caribbean cultures with a focus on literature, visual and performance art, and political culture. She is the author of Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature (University Press of Florida in 2014) and is currently completing a second monograph on queer Dominican literature, visual and performance art. She has also published on Latin American and Caribbean arts for various Dominican and U.S. art magazines and is currently serves on the editorial committee for the journal Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.
Before joining the Barnard faculty in 2006, she was a research associate at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where she developed and taught a performance studies concentration. Maja Horn is affiliated with and teaches regularly for the Africana Studies Program at Barnard College. She also teaches graduate seminars for the Department of Latin American and Iberian Studies and is an affiliate of CSER (The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race) at Columbia University. In 2016-2017 she was a Heyman Center Faculty Fellow at Columbia University.
Working Group Affiliations
Rebecca Jordan-Young
Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College
Rebecca Jordan-Young is Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. A sociomedical scientist, Jordan-Young explores reciprocal relations between biomedical sciences and social hierarchies of gender, sexuality, race, and class.
Rebecca Jordan-Young is Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. A sociomedical scientist, Jordan-Young explores reciprocal relations between biomedical sciences and social hierarchies of gender, sexuality, race, and class.
Working Group Affiliation
Recovery, Project Co-Director
Katrina Karkazis
Fellow, Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University
Katrina Karkazis is an anthropologist and bioethicist at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University and a faculty affiliate in the Program for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, also at Stanford.
Her recent work examines "gender verification" of elite female athletes. An article analyzing the latest policies was published in the American Journal of Bioethics.
Commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, and Discover.
Katrina Karkazis
Senior Research Scholar, Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University
Katrina Karkazis is an anthropologist and bioethicist at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University and a faculty affiliate in the Program for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, also at Stanford.
Her recent work examines "gender verification" of elite female athletes. An article analyzing the latest policies was published in the American Journal of Bioethics.
Commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, and Discover.
Her work has been covered in the New York Times, Time, The Week, CNN, ESPN, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Jezebel, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, San Jose Mercury News, and the Toronto Star. She has also appeared on the BBC, CBS News, NBC News, KCBS, CTV News, Q Radio, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
Working Group Affiliation
Maria Rivera Maulucci
Associate Professor, Department of Education, Barnard College
Maria S. Rivera Maulucci, Associate Professor of Education, joined the faculty of Barnard in 2004. She is a proud member of the Class of 1988 at Barnard and serves as Co-Fund Chair. Prior to coming to Barnard, Maria served as Director of the Science Professional Development Center for Region One in the Bronx. Her expertise in science pedagogy and teacher education draws on 16 years of experience teaching at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. Her interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on how teachers learn to teach for social justice and the role of language, identity, and emotions in teacher development. Professor Rivera is the Principal Investigator for the Barnard College Robert Noyce Teacher Education Scholars Program (BNTSP) funded by the National Science Foundation.
Maria Rivera Maulucci
Associate Professor, Education Department, Barnard College
Maria S. Rivera Maulucci, Associate Professor of Education, joined the faculty of Barnard in 2004. She is a proud member of the Class of 1988 at Barnard and serves as Co-Fund Chair. Prior to coming to Barnard, Maria served as Director of the Science Professional Development Center for Region One in the Bronx. Her expertise in science pedagogy and teacher education draws on 16 years of experience teaching at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. Her interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on how teachers learn to teach for social justice and the role of language, identity, and emotions in teacher development. Professor Rivera is the Principal Investigator for the Barnard College Robert Noyce Teacher Education Scholars Program (BNTSP) funded by the National Science Foundation.
Working Group Affiliation
Shayoni Mitra
Assistant Professor, Department of Theater, Barnard College
Shayoni Mitra is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Barnard College. Professor Mitra works at the intersection of performance and politics. Her interest in political theatre stems from her years as an actor with Delhi based street theatre group Jana Natya Manch. She is currently revising toward publication her manuscript, “Contesting Capital: A History of Political Theatre in Postcolonial Delhi,” which interrogates the ever shifting, adapting expressions of political theatre under different configurations of power. It is a historical look at both proscenium and street theatre from the decade of Independence in the 1940s to the twenty first century. The manuscript covers a range of styles including folk and revolutionary singing troupes, large open-air performances, topical agit-prop plays, intimate and improvized activist pieces and feminist performances.
Shayoni Mitra
Assistant Professor, Theater, Barnard College
Shayoni Mitra is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Barnard College. Professor Mitra works at the intersection of performance and politics. Her interest in political theatre stems from her years as an actor with Delhi based street theatre group Jana Natya Manch. She is currently revising toward publication her manuscript, “Contesting Capital: A History of Political Theatre in Postcolonial Delhi,” which interrogates the ever shifting, adapting expressions of political theatre under different configurations of power. It is a historical look at both proscenium and street theatre from the decade of Independence in the 1940s to the twenty first century. The manuscript covers a range of styles including folk and revolutionary singing troupes, large open-air performances, topical agit-prop plays, intimate and improvized activist pieces and feminist performances. This understanding of what it means to be political in changing times, is linked fundamentally with the life and profile of a city. New Delhi, the new capital of postcolonial India offers a unique nexus of local, regional and national power from which to understand and interrogate the ways in which cultural policy functions in creating identity for a new nation and its multiple peoples. Read this way, the history of political theatre in Delhi becomes metonymic for the oppressed and marginalized populations of this ever expanding global city.
Prof. Mitra has taught courses on Indian, Asian and non-Western performances as well as modern Theatre History and Performance Studies. Her teaching bridges the gap between the global North and South, putting into dialogue the histories of Western Realism with classical, folk, stylized, avant garde and improvized forms from around the world. She actively embraces the scholar-practitioner-activist role encouraging the connections between pedagogy and praxis. Before coming to Barnard, she taught at Brown and New York University in the United States and conducted lectures and theatre workshops in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Milia University and Delhi University in India. Among her current projects is her collaboration with a group of sex workers in Sangli, Maharashtra, India examining the ways in which they use theatre for their political mobilization.
Working Group Affiliation
Ronna Popkin
PhD Student, Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University
Ronna A. Popkin is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociomedical Sciences (SMS) with a concentration in Sociology at Columbia University. She was a Fellow in SMS's NICHD predoctoral training program in Gender, Sexuality, and Health. Her multi-disciplinary research interests span the fields of sociology, public health, science and technology studies, and gender studies, and include adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health, genetic risk, and women’s health in the United States. Prior to attending Columbia, Ms. Popkin worked as a community sexuality educator for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and lectured courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on sexuality education, women’s health, and the politics of fertility control. Ms. Popkin earned her M.S. in Health Education and B.S. with Honors in Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ronna Popkin
PhD Student, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Ronna A. Popkin is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociomedical Sciences (SMS) with a concentration in Sociology at Columbia University. She was a Fellow in SMS's NICHD predoctoral training program in Gender, Sexuality, and Health. Her multi-disciplinary research interests span the fields of sociology, public health, science and technology studies, and gender studies, and include adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health, genetic risk, and women’s health in the United States. Prior to attending Columbia, Ms. Popkin worked as a community sexuality educator for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and lectured courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on sexuality education, women’s health, and the politics of fertility control. Ms. Popkin earned her M.S. in Health Education and B.S. with Honors in Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Working Group Affiliation
Rayna Rapp
Fellow, Anthropology, New York University
Rayna Rapp (former Rayna R. Reiter) is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and forward-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and has been praised for providing "invaluable insights into the first generation of women who had to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancies on the basis of amniocentesis result".
Rayna Rapp
Anthropology, New York University
Rayna Rapp (former Rayna R. Reiter) is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and forward-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and has been praised for providing "invaluable insights into the first generation of women who had to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancies on the basis of amniocentesis result". She co-authored many articles with Faye Ginsburg, including Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship, a topic the pair has continued to research.
Working Group Affiliation
J.T. Roane
Fellow, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati.
J.T. Roane is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He is also part of the University’s urban futures initiative. Roane is broadly concerned about matters of geography, sexuality, and religion in relation to Black communities. He is at work on a manuscript, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place in Philadelphia, which historicizes multiple modes of insurgent spatial assemblage Black communities articulated in Philadelphia in the second half of the twentieth.
J.T Roane
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati
J.T. Roane is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He is also part of the University’s urban futures initiative. Roane is broadly concerned about matters of geography, sexuality, and religion in relation to Black communities. He is at work on a manuscript, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place in Philadelphia, which historicizes multiple modes of insurgent spatial assemblage Black communities articulated in Philadelphia in the second half of the twentieth.
Working Group Affiliation
Sahar Sadjadi
Fellow, Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College
Sahar Sadjadi is a physician, anthropologist and assistant professor of Sexuality, Women’s and Gender studies at Amherst College. She is currently completing a book based on an ethnographic multi-sited study of the clinical practices around gender non-conforming children in the US and the revision of the psychiatric category, Gender Identity Disorder in Children.
Sahar Sadjadi
Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College
Sahar Sadjadi is a physician, anthropologist and assistant professor of Sexuality, Women’s and Gender studies at Amherst College. She is currently completing a book based on an ethnographic multi-sited study of the clinical practices around gender non-conforming children in the US and the revision of the psychiatric category, Gender Identity Disorder in Children.
She studied medicine at Tehran University of Medical Sciences and received her PhD in medical anthropology at Columbia University. She conducted an ethnographic multi-sited study of the clinical practices around gender non-conforming children and the revision of the psychiatric category, Gender Identity Disorder in Children. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and National Science Foundation. During the 2012-13 academic year, Dr. Sadjadi was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She joined Amherst College faculty in 2013 for the position of Gender, Science and Technology. She is currently writing about the medical interventions that suppress or delay puberty in children.
Working Group Affiliation
Rae Silver
Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Psychology , Barnard College
Rae Silver is the Helene L. and Mark N. Kaplan Professor of Natural & Physical Sciences and the head of the Silver Neurobiology Laboratory. Since 1976, Professor Silver has been a member of Barnard’s faculty and has taught courses in Quantitative Reasoning, Neuroscience and Psychology. The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Mental Health, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research, are among the organizations that have supported her research.
Natural & Physical Sciences and head of the Silver Neurobiology Laboratory, Barnard College
Rae Silver is the Helene L. and Mark N. Kaplan Professor of Natural & Physical Sciences and the head of the Silver Neurobiology Laboratory. Since 1976, Professor Silver has been a member of Barnard’s faculty and has taught courses in Quantitative Reasoning, Neuroscience and Psychology. The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Mental Health, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research, are among the organizations that have supported her research.
Over the course of her career, Professor Silver has held many positions on committees in services to the educational community, the scientific and research community, and the Barnard and Columbia communities. Currently, she is a US Representative and serves as Vice-chair on the Council of Scientists for the Human Frontiers Science Program and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Forum on Neuroscience. Her work as Senior Advisor at the National Science Foundation helped to create a series of workshops to examine opportunities for the next decade in making advances in Neuroscience through the joint efforts of biologists, chemists, educators, mathematicians, physicists, psychologists and statisticians. She served as co-chair of the NASA committee that prioritized biological research for the International Space Station. She is a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Her two research areas focus on sleep-wake cycles and their neural bases, and on immune – nervous system interactions in the brain.
Working Group Affiliation
Carole S. Vance
Mailman School of Public Health and Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Carole S. Vance, PhD, works on integrating sexuality with human rights frameworks and rights-based health interventions. She has written widely on sexuality, science, gender, and policy; policy controversies about sexual expression and imagery; and sexuality theory and research methods. For the past ten years, she has directed a program on sexuality, gender, health and human rights, which advances policy-relevant scholarship and facilitates exchange between researchers and advocates on sexual health and rights issues.
Carole S. Vance
Mailman School of Public Health and Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Carole S. Vance, PhD, works on integrating sexuality with human rights frameworks and rights-based health interventions. She has written widely on sexuality, science, gender, and policy; policy controversies about sexual expression and imagery; and sexuality theory and research methods. For the past ten years, she has directed a program on sexuality, gender, health and human rights, which advances policy-relevant scholarship and facilitates exchange between researchers and advocates on sexual health and rights issues.
Dr. Vance has extensive experience in training students from developing countries, particularly on research methods in sexuality, and the practical application of sexuality research in a range of cultural, national, and policy contexts. Dr. Vance currently is involved in research on trafficking into forced prostitution, also known as sex trafficking, with particular focus on the ways in which ethnographic research can inform policy, as well as health and rights interventions. Dr. Vance edited the landmark collection, Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, and is completing the edited volume, Ethnography and Policy: What Do We Know about Trafficking?, with publication in 2007. In 2005, Dr. Vance received the David R. Kessler Award for lifetime contributions to studies of sexuality.
Working Group Affiliations