Los Angeles Central Library hosts exhibits inspired by the work of Marianne Hirsch

The Los Angeles Central Library is currently hosting two exhibits inspired by the work of CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch, both examining the generational trauma of the Armenian Genocide. The main exhibit, entitled “Nonlinear Histories”, is co-curated by Isin Önol, member of the Working Group for the CSSD Project Women Mobilizing Memory (for which Hirsch served as Co-Director), and features the work of fellow Working Group member Silvina Der Meguerditchian. The exhibit is inspired by Hirsch’s groundbreaking work on postmemory, and is the first exhibit to use postmemory as a framework for examining the Armenian Genocide. In addition to “Nonlinear Histories”, a second exhibit, “Prosperity, Loss, and Survival: A Photographic Journey from the Dildilian Family Archive”, is also being displayed at the library.

As part of the exhibit, Silvina Der Meguerditchian contributed “Treasures”, a work constructed from 130 pages of health remedies composed by the artist’s great-grandmother, a genocide survivor. Der Meguerditchian’s piece aims to provide “a space to reflect and see because lots of second and third generations were silenced by trauma, but our grand kids can now articulate a lot of things”.

In addition to serving as inspiration for the exhibit, Hirsch delivered its opening lecture, entitled “Forty Days and More: Connective Histories.” The exhibit, which opened on March 17, runs through May 6.

CSSD Project Director Jack Halberstam Co-Curates Conference at Stedelijk Museum

Professor Jack Halberstam, director of the CSSD project Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere, recently co-curated a conference and festival at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The conference, titled Hold Me Now - Feel and Touch in an Unreal World, was held from March 21-24 2018, and co-curated by Karen Archey, Rizvana Bradley, and Mark Paterson.

Consisting of four single-day “discursive, and at times perforative” programs, each curated by one of the four curators, the conference aimed to examine the ways in which touch operates in contemporary “technologically mediated, dematerialized digital cultures”, further examining touch “in artistic, philosophical, and political terms to conceive how the haptic is thought and experienced in life, art and design, and theory.”

In addition to serving as a CSSD project director and member of the CSSD Executive Committee, Halberstam is also Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Jean Howard Delivers the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University

CSSD project director Jean Howard gave the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University on "Edward Bond's Bingo: Shakespeare Revisited."

Professor Howard also led a seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America in Los Angeles on "Shakespeare and Marx Now."

Jean Howard is a renowned Shakespeare scholar and has written many books and essays on early modern literature, Shakespeare, feminist studies, and theater history. She is a co-director for the CSSD projects Engendering the Archive, Women Mobilizing Memory, and Reframing Gendered Violence.

The Dean Family Speaker Series is hosted by The Department of English at Wake Forest University and brings nationally and internationally-recognized scholars to campus. It encourages critical conversations and dialogue related to the study of English.

Jack Halberstam Receives a Columbia-PSL Global Humanities Grant

Jack Halberstam, director of the CSSD working group Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere, has received a Columbia-PSL global humanities grant to organize a transnational conference on sexuality and gender theory. The conference, which will take place at Reid Hall in Paris, will address the need to overcome a singular model of gender through cross-cultural interchange and collaboration. The goal is to start a conversation about setting a new path for queer studies, in which ideas flow between cultures and a global model of sexuality studies is displaced by one characterized by diversity of thought.

Lila Abu-Lughod Delivers Geertz Commemorative Lecture at Princeton University

Lila Abu-Lughod, former director of CSSD and co-director of CSSD projects Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies, Reframing Gendered Violence, and Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, delivered the Clifford Geertz Commemorative Lecture at Princeton University on February 22, 2018.

Abu-Lughod’s lecture, “Settler Colonialism Observed: Palestine's Alter-natives”, examined “Palestine’s apparent political impasses” in light of “the current ferment in critical indigenous and native studies about settler colonialism in places like Australia and North America.” Considering “questions about how to judge the efflorescence of recent Palestinian cultural projects like the new Palestinian Museum”, Abu-Lughod argues that the concept of settler colonialism, “however contested and even problematic”, remains a potent force that can “generate comparisons and solidarities that burst open exhausted political imaginations and bring together the political, material, and moral.”

In addition to serving as director, project co-director, and executive committee member at CSSD, Abu-Lughod is Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, a former director and current executive committee member of the Columbia Institute for Research on Women, Gender, & Sexuality, and former director of the Columbia Middle East Institute.  

CSSD Project Co-Director Frances Negrón-Muntaner Publishes “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico”

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Co-Director of the CSSD Project Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy, recently published the essay “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico” in both English and Italian as part of the exhibit “Blackout: Allora & Calzadilla” at the Maxxi Museum in Rome. Negrón-Muntaner’s essay additionally appeared in Politics/Letters.

Negrón-Muntaner’s essay points out that the aftermath of Hurricane Maria “revealed how the United States systematically dispossesses Puerto Rico”, arguing further that “in a world where the powerful routinely enact predatory acts under the brightest of lights, [the blackout following the hurricane] can serve to illuminate the unknown, clarify what has been obscured, ignite revolt, and, like in the theater, end one scene and begin anew.”

In addition to serving as a CSSD Project Co-Director and Executive Committee member, Negrón-Muntaner is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Former Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.  

CSSD Project Co-Director Kevin Fellezs to Give Two Lectures in China

Kevin Fellezs, Co-Director of the CSSD Project Pacific Climate Circuits: Moving beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Economics, will give two upcoming lectures in China, entitled “Fusion, Then…And Now: Thoughts on the Persistence of the Broken Middle”. Fellezs will speak at two eminent musical conservatories in China: the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (widely considered the most prestigious in the country) and the Tianjin Conservatory of Music in Tianjin.

In addition to serving as a CSSD Project Co-Director and Executive Committee member, Fellezs is Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies in the Department of Music, with a joint appointment with the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

RGFGV announces second Media Fellowship Competition

CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence announces its second Media Fellowship Competition. The second of two reporting grants hosted by the project, this cycle will focus on South Asia. Previous Media Fellows were: Yasmin el Rifae, Nafeesa Syeed, and Samira Shackle.

The full announcement is available here.

Co-Director of CSSD project Social Justice After the Welfare State, Alice Kessler-Harris, is featured in a NYTimes article

Alice Kessler-Harris is featured in a NYTimes article on workplace power dynamics and the slow progress for women in traditionally 'masculine' fields.

Kessler-Harris discusses the problems with characterizing certain jobs as ‘manly’ and the negative implications these have for women employed in these sectors.

Click here to read the article.

Alice Kessler-Harris is a co-director of CSSD project Social Justice after the Welfare State. She is also co-editor of the book “Democracy and the Welfare State: The Two Wests in the Age of Austerity,”

CSSD is hosting a book launch event for Democracy and the Welfare State: The Two Wests in the Age of Austerity on April 4, 2018.

Blog Post Now Available for CSSD Precision Medicine Event The Genomic Revolution, Genetics Counselors, and “Doing Ethics”

On January 22, CSSD/PM&S project Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture welcomed Dr. Susan Markens (CUNY-Lehman College) for its first talk of the semester, titled The Genomic Revolution, Genetics Counselors, and Doing Ethics.

Dr. Markens' talk presented data primarily derived from forty-two qualitative interviews and was based on her research about the perspectives of genetic counselors towards the increasing availability and use of genetic science and testing.

The Precision Medicine lecture series represents a broad-based exploration of questions that precision medicine raises in law, ethics, the social sciences, economics, and the humanities.

Click here to read more about Dr. Markens talk on ethics and genetic counseling.

Essay Conceived in IRWGS seminar inspired by CSSD Project is Published in the New York Times Modern Love Column

Columbia University senior Bindu Bansinath wrote the first version of the newest Modern Love essay in the IRWGS undergraduate seminar Narrating Rape, taught by CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch.

Bansinath's essay “How ‘Lolita’ Freed Me From My Own Humbert” has been published today online and will be in this Sunday's print version of the New York Times as part of their popular Modern Love essay series. Her essay tells the story of a young woman’s struggle with abuse and her journey to reclaim her voice.

The Narrating Rape course is one of the outcomes of the Reframing Gendered Violence project at CSSD, part of the Women Creating Change initiative.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Delivers Keynote Lecture at Dhaka Art Summit

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, co-director of the CSSD project The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, recently delivered the keynote lecture at the 2018 Dhaka Art Summit. Professor Spivak’s keynote address “addressed the precarious situation of the Rohingya people in relation to Indigeneity in the world today, with a special emphasis on the languages of the Bengal region.”

Professor Spivak’s keynote lecture received news coverage in the Dhaka Tribune, and is available to watch online in full here.  

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is co-director of the CSSD project The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Kenya and Ghana, Statistics and Stories. Spivak is also University Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and a founding member of CSSD affiliate the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.  

CSSD project Gender & The Global Slum featured at the inaugural “She Opened The Door” Conference

CSSD executive committee members Anupama Rao and Ana Paulina Lee presented research from the CSSD working group Gender and the Global Slum at the inaugural She Opened the Door: Columbia University Women's Conference.

On February 9-11, 2018, more than 1,000 alumni and students convened at She Opened the Door for a weekend of celebrating, learning from, and expanding horizons with fellow Columbia alumnae who are making a difference in our world.

Rao and Lee were among a distinguished group of faculty from Columbia and Barnard to present fascinating, new research in TED-type talks and describe how their findings can impact women in various key ways. Their talk discussed how women in international urban slums address the urgent problems of poverty and social exclusion.

Notable Columbia alumnae speakers at the conference included Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59LAW, Poppy Harlow ‘05CC, Abigail Disney ’87, ‘94GSAS, A’Lelia Bundles ’76JRN, Claire Shipman ‘86CC, ‘94SIPA, and more.

“She Opened the Door” is a tribute to Winifred Edgerton Merrill. She was the first woman to receive a degree from Columbia University, opening the door for women to gain admission to Columbia's graduate and professional Schools at a time when co-education for women was under heavy debate.

CSSD project Gender & the Global Slum looks at the social hazards of urban informality and its disproportionate effects on women.

Click here to watch the conversation with Justice Ginsburg.

Anupama Rao and Ana Paulina Lee at the conference

Alice Kessler-Harris named to the Board of Governors of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize

CSSD Project Co-Director Alice Kessler-Harris has been named to the Board of Governors of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. The prize, established in honor of the late senator, awards $100,000 to “a new play or musical that enlists theater’s power to explore the past of the United States, to participate meaningfully in the great issues of our day through public conversation, grounded in historical understanding.”  Kessler-Harris joins fellow CSSD Project Co-Director Jean Howard on the Board of Governors.

Kessler-Harris was Co-Director of CSSD Project Social Justice After the Welfare State, and is both R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History and Professor Emerita at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University. CSSD eagerly looks forward to hosting a panel, “Democracy After the Welfare State”,  in honor of the publication of Democracy and the Welfare State: The Two Wests in the Age of Austerity, edited by Kessler-Harris and Maurizio Vaudagna.

Jack Halberstam comments on RuPaul’s Drag Race in The New York Times Magazine

CSSD Project Director Jack Halberstam spoke with New York Times staff writer Jenna Wortham for  “Is RuPaul’s Drag Race the Most Radical Show on TV?”, published in the January 28th, 2018 edition of The New York Times Magazine.

Halberstam spoke about issues of gender, representation, and power dynamics in RuPaul’s Drag Race, pointing out that “there’s no ‘RuPaul’s Drag Kings...we still have this idea that femininity is malleable, and masculinity is a protected domain of real power and privilege. It is not transferable or attainable. The public has no appetite for artificial masculinity.”

Halberstam is the Project Director of CSSD’s Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere, a working group created to “discuss, debate and investigate the politics of sexuality and gender in a global frame.” Halberstam is also Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

New Yorker article about the work of Jennifer Hirsch on the SHIFT project at Columbia

Jia Tolentino has published an article entitled "Safer Spaces" in the February 12 & 19, 2018 print issue of New Yorker magazine. In this article, Tolentino highlights the work of Jennifer Hirsch, co-director of CSSD project Reframing Gendered Violence (RGV), on the SHIFT program at Columbia. SHIFT is a comprehensive research project that examines the many factors that shape sexual health and sexual violence for undergrads at Columbia.

You can read the full New Yorker article online here.

In October 2017, Professor Hirsch convened a panel discussion called Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault, as part of the RGV project at CSSD. A video of that event can be found on the CSSD YouTube channel here.

RGFGV Media Fellows Yasmin El-Rifae and Samira Shackle Publish Articles on TheNation.com and ProspectMagazine.co.uk

CSSD Project Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence held an international competition and selected three Media Fellows to receive reporting grants. They joined the project, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, and did research in the Middle East to produce innovative media stories.

Yasmin El-Rifae describes her experience with a volunteer feminist group resisting sexual violence that formed during the Egyptian Revolution. Her article ‘What the Egyptian Revolution Can Offer #MeToo’, highlights the way Egyptian activists are using self-organized, direct, and offensive tactics to fight sexual violence. In this era of the #MeToo movement, El-Rifae urges her readers to move towards a feminist praxis that creates global and systemic change and to look to Egyptian feminists for direction.

In her article ‘The Bureaucracy of Isis’, Samira Shackle looks at the dilemmas involved in the quest for restorative justice in Mosul post-ISIS. Focusing on the experience of refugee women, she reframes dominant narratives about religion and gender-based violence. Shackle’s interviews with family members of ISIS collaborators and victims of ISIS violence uncover how women suffer violence at the hands of family, the state, and ultimately how much human suffering has been created by imperialist interventions in Iraq.

Video Available from RGV Event “Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault”

On October 5, 2017, leading researchers from across the country presented at the panel, “Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault.” Organized and moderated by Jennifer S. Hirsch, co-Principal Investigator of Columbia’s ground-breaking Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation, the panelists presented new and emerging work on environmental drivers of campus sexual assault, and discussed the institutional challenges of conducting research on campus sexual violence at universities seeking to comply with Title IX guidance.

The October 5 forum was part of the CSSD Reframing Gendered Violence series of panels and seminars applying critical perspectives from the social sciences and humanities to gender violence. Reframing Gendered Violence is a two-year-long project of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference and is supported by a grant from the University’s Dean of Humanities.

Video is available here.

Anupama Rao publishes Gender, Caste and the Imagination of Equality

CSSD project co-director Anupama Rao has published the edited volume Gender, Caste, and the Imagination of Equality. This volume, published by Women Unlimited, features essays that examine the relationship between gender, caste, class, and political agency in the context of ongoing, rapid social transformation in contemporary India.

Anupama Rao is a current member of the Center for the Study of Social Difference Executive Committee, as well as co-director of CSSD projects Reframing Gendered Violence and Gender & the Global Slum. Rao is associate professor of History at Barnard College, and Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University.    

New blog post from Precision Medicine working group about research of Dr. Kadija Ferryman

Kadija Ferryman’s talk on November 30, 2017 for the Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture CSSD working group drew from her post-doctoral project, “Fairness in Precision Medicine,” a study on which she is co-PI with danah boyd at the Data and Society Institute.

You can read the full post, written by Precision Medicine graduate fellows Larry Au and Jade H. Tan, here.