Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner Pens Article for Dissent Magazine

Frances Negron-Muntaner, Unpayable Debt working group co-director and professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, addresses the recent historic protests in Puerto Rico in an article for Dissent magazine. The article notes the international reach and inclusivity of the thirteen day protests that led to the resignation of Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rosselló. 

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is co-director of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy  and creator of the Puerto Rican community currency project Valor y Cambio. 

To read her full article in Dissent magazine click here. 

Menstrual Health and Gender Justice Working Group Call For Submissions

NYC Interdisciplinary Workshop:
Multifaceted Menstruation

Deadline for abstracts: August 30, 2019
Date of workshop: November 22, 2019

The current momentum around menstruation has drawn together scholars, activists, policymakers, health practitioners, and corporations--each differently invested in menstrual health. Over the past year, the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice Working Group has brought together Columbia University researchers across different departments interested in menstruation, encouraging individual and collaborative research that crosses disciplinary boundaries to address complex questions. This workshop hopes to broaden that reach and support, and to facilitate further interdisciplinary collaboration and networking beyond the Columbia University community.

Information for Contributors:

This one-day workshop seeks to critically evaluate the current state of research on menstruation, with interest in examining whose voices are being represented, which actors shape the dominant narrative, whose voices are marginalized, what gaps in data, research, and policy exist, and how interdisciplinary collaboration may help remedy some of these gaps. The workshop also hopes to serve as an opportunity to make connections with menstrual health researchers in the Greater New York area.

Submissions may address research in any area of Critical Menstruation Studies that engages:

• Historical, socio-cultural, religious and political economic perspectives

• Feminist, queer, and post-colonial theory

• Science, technology, biomedical informatics, and clinical approaches

• Policy and programmatic interventions

and/or explores the following topics (list is not exhaustive):

• Menstrual hygiene management initiatives

• The emergence and implications of FemTech

• De-gendering menstruation/queering menstruation

• Menstruators of diverse identities and experiences

• Menstruation across the lifespan (puberty, menarche, menopause, etc)

• Menstrual disorders

• Menstrual health education

• Menstrual activism

• Data on menstruation

Submission Guidelines:

Researchers are invited to submit proposals for flash presentations (5 minutes, 3 power-point slides max.) on any of the above or other topics related to menstruation. We welcome submissions from all different disciplines, career levels, and stages of research. Please submit an abstract (300 words max.) and a brief bio (150 words max.) at this link. For any questions regarding submission guidelines, please email michelle.chouinard@columbia.edu.

We welcome submissions from all researchers in the Greater New York area. Please feel free to share this call with interested colleagues. Please note that we cannot provide travel support for the workshop.

For further information please visit the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice Working Group website and blog (https://periodsatcolumbia.com/) or contact Michelle Chouinard, Coordinator of the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice Working Group (michelle.chouinard@columbia.edu).

Unpayable Debt Co-director Appears on Latino Rebels Podcast

On the eighth day of on-going protests in Puerto Rico Unpayable Debt co-director, Professor Frances Negron-Muntaner, discussed the overlap between her community currency project Valor y Cambio and what has come to be called the Puerto Rican Spring on the Latino Rebels Podcast.  

To hear the entire interview listen to the podcast here.

For more on Valor y Cambio click here. 

Frances Negron-Muntaner is a filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar and professor at Columbia University, where she is also the founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive.

CSSD Welcomes Paige West as Director

Paige West, Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, begins her directorship of the Center for the Study of Social Difference this summer after having served as co-director of two CSSD working groups, Reframing Gendered Violence and Pacific Climate Circuits.

“I’m honored to have been selected to direct CSSD for the next few years,” says Dr. West. “The center’s goal of creating space for our community to come together to work towards scholarship that pushes our understanding of social difference in new directions and that produces social change lies at the heart of why I initially became a scholar.”

Dr. West’s broad scholarly interest is the relationship between societies and their environments. More specifically, she has written about the linkages between environmental conservation and international development, the material and symbolic ways in which the natural world is understood and produced, the aesthetics and poetics of human social relations with nature, and the creation of commodities and practices of consumption.

In addition to her academic work, Dr. West is the co-founder, and a board member, of the PNG Institute of Biological Research, a small NGO dedicated to building academic opportunities for research in Papua New Guinea by Papua New Guineans. Dr. West is also the co-founder of the Roviana Solwara Skul, a school in Papua New Guinea dedicated to teaching at the nexus of indigenous knowledge and western scientific knowledge.

Susan Meiselas’s Photography Reviewed by The New York Review of books

A recent article in The New York Review of Books highlights the work of photographer Susan Meiselas. The piece specifically chronicles photographs from Nicaragua during the 1970’s. Meiselas is a former fellow of both the Engendering the Archive and Women Mobilizing Memory working groups.

To read the complete article click here.

CSSD Working Group to Launch Course in Spring 2020

In the spring of 2020 CSSD working group Geographies of Injustice will be launching a course entitled “Subaltern Urban Studies” taught by co-directors Anupama Rao and Ana Paulina Lee.

The course, presented in seminar format, will explore how spatial politics intersect with economic inequality and social difference (race, gender, caste, and ethnicity) to produce marginalized and stigmatized spaces such as “favelas,” “slum,” and “ghettos.” The course will be divided between the study of the colonial and the industrial city, going into topics such as public health, housing and the slum, political violence and forms of cultural production.

Anupama Rao is an Associate Professor of History as well as Associate Director for the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

Ana Paulina Lee is Assistant Professor of Luso-Brazilian Studies at Columbia University.

Susan Meiselas wins 2019 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize

Susan Meiselas, photographer and fellow of former CSSD working groups Engendering the Archive and Women Mobilizing Memory was awarded the 2019 Deutsche Borse photography prize. Susan’s work spans five decades and covers subjects from the scattered communities of the Kurdish diaspora to the women in her Carnival Strippers series. Her engagement with the people in her photos lends her work a celebrated sense of humanity.

For more read the full feature in The Guardian here.

Valor y Cambio Project Featured in Brooklyn Public Library Podcast

Frances Negron-Muntaner, co-director of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, discussed the Valor y Cambio project on a recent episode of the Brooklyn Public Library podcast. In the show Frances talks about how the project was created following Hurricane Maria when proposals for a new library system were met a lack of enthusiasm.

In an effort to show that people in Puerto Rico both want and need community spaces and free access to information she launched the community project Valor y Cambio, which invited people to share stories about what they value. The initiative brought Puerto Ricans together and demonstrated the importance of community.

You can listen to the full podcast here.
For more on Valor y Cambio visit the website.

Frances Negron-Muntaner Wins Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award

Frances Negron-Muntaner, co-director of the CSSD working group Unpayable Debt and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, has been awarded the Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award by the Latin American Studies Association. She was recognized by the association for her many achievements including but not limited to her recent community based project “Valor y Cambio” as well as her autobiographical film Brincando el Charco.

Frances has been named one of the “100 most influential hispanics” by Hispanic Business Magazine and was recognized as a global expert by the United Nations’ Rapid Response Media Mechanism. She will receive the award in Boston on May 26th.

Puerto Rican Community Currency Project on Display in Manhattan

On Sunday May 26 ,2019 the ATM used in the Valor y Cambio project in Puerto Rico was shown at the 32nd Loisaida Festival in Manhattan. The Valor y Cambio project was created by Sarabel Santos Negron, multidisciplinary artist and educator and Frances Negron-Muntaner, co-director of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia.

The Valor y Cambio project is a community currency project that lasted for 9 days in Puerto Rico with the goal of to generating more interest and discussion in socially just solutions to the island’s economic challenges. Residents would obtain decorated bills that could be used at local businesses in exchange for telling stories about themselves and their values. This past weekend 200 such bills were dispensed in Manhattan from the same ATM at the Loisaida festival.

You can read the full story here on Voices of NY.
For more on the Valor y Cambio community currency project click here.

Dr. Sonia Tolani Discusses Women’s Heart Health and Risk Factors

Dr. Sonia Tolani, co-director of the working group Women’s Heart Disease Awareness and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia, discussed the heart disease risk factors unique to women as well as how to increase awareness of the high number of women affected by it.

In the interview she stated that half of women are unaware that heart disease is the number one killer of women and that her goal is to change that. Traditional risk factors such as diabetes and smoking are relevant for men and women but increase women's chance of developing heart disease more than men's. Additionally, there are factors such as pregnancy history that are unique to women in determining their risk.

The “Love My Heart” app was uniquely designed with women in mind, as it takes into account information relevant to them in order to suggest lifestyle changes to maintain and improve heart health. Dr. Tolani discusses how the application works and more in her interview with Steve Adubato.

Watch the full interview here.
You can download the “Love My Heart” app here.
Be sure to check out more from the Women’s Heart Disease Awareness working group by following them on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Women’s Heart Disease Awareness Working Group Launches App

Co-directors of the CSSD working group Women’s Heart Disease Awareness, Dr. Natalie Bello and Dr. Sonia Tolani, have created the “Love My Heart” app in an effort to raise awareness of and prevent heart disease in women. The app lets women understand their risk of heart disease using a series of 12 questions.

Based on their individual risk factors the app helps users develop strategies to increase their heart health such as ways to fit in more exercise and eat better. The overall goal of this initiative is to spark a conversation between women and their health care providers.  

You can read more about the  “Love My Heart” app here.
The application can be downloaded on the Apple store here.
Be sure to check out more from the Women’s Heart Disease Awareness working group by following them on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Statement of Support for Ayse Gül Altinay from CSSD & WCC

Our colleague Ayse Gül Altinay, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Center at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, was sentenced to 25 months in prison earlier this week. She is one of over 2200 Academics for Peace who three years ago signed a statement “We will not be a party to this crime” appealing for an end to violent state-sponsored persecution of Kurdish citizens of Turkey. The investigation in Istanbul has covered only the first 1200 signatories so far, but it might be extended to the second 1000 as well. In this, her fourth, judicial hearing, Altinay was charged with “willingly and knowingly supporting a terrorist organization as a non-member.” The court's charge and thus the sentencing have no merit.

Ayse Gül Altinay has been a Faculty Fellow of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference since 2013. She is a co-organizer of the Working Group on “Women Mobilizing Memory” and a co-editor of the forthcoming Women Mobilizing Memory volume (Columbia University Press, 2019). Last September, she was also an invited speaker at the Center’s tenth anniversary conference “What We Can Do When There’s Nothing To be Done.” Her collaborative project “Curious Steps”— a gender-memory walk through Istanbul – spurred other such memory walks in additional sites including Harlem. Ayse Gül Altinay’s contributions to the Center’s work have been immeasurable: her feminist commitment to nonviolent protest and to transformative activism; her sharp insights into the workings of power and militarism and her determination to fight them; her fierce hopefulness combined with personal kindness, warmth and radiance have been an inspiration to all of us fortunate to be working with her.

In the spirit of collaboration and solidarity that Ayse Gül Altinay represents, it is important to point out that she is not alone in this struggle. Hers is one of a large number of cases receiving 25-month sentences that cannot be commuted. These cases, hers included, are in the process of being appealed. Some shorter sentences have been commuted, and many other colleagues are awaiting court dates over the next months. This is the time to speak out forcefully on all of their behalf and on behalf of freedom of expression and academic freedom.

On May 21st, 2019, Ayse Gül Altinay made the following statement to the court:

Every individual, every family living in this geography has suffered from past wars, migrations and experiences of violence. In terms of the cycle of violence that trauma studies alerts us to, we live in a challenging, vulnerable geography.

Yet, what we make of these past experiences of pain is up to us...

Are we going to turn our pain into more violence, hate, pain and injustice, or into steps that multiply life, beauty, love, peace and justice?

This is the main question that shapes my work and my life.

I firmly believe that we all have new steps we can take towards healing the traumas that have been transmitted from one generation to the other, and to break out of the cycles of violence that we are living through.

We, at CSSD and Columbia Global Freedom of Expression stand in solidarity and admiration for Ayse Gül Altinay and all of our academic colleagues who are being persecuted for their courage to speak out against violent aggression. The injustice of these sentences cannot be tolerated.

“Reframing Gender Violence Globally” Students Complete Course with Presentations

CSSD working group Reframing Gendered Violence launched a course entitled, “Reframing Gender Violence Globally,” in the spring 2019 semester. It was taught by Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science Lila Abu-Lughod, co-director of the Reframing Gendered Violence working group. The course came to an end this week with student presentations.

The full course description can be read here.

Farrah Jasmine Griffin featured in Kennedy Center program on the Great Migration

Professor Farrah J. Griffin co-director of CSSD working group Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women and chairwoman of Columbia University’s new African American and African Diaspora Studies department read a selection from her book “Who Set You Flowin’?” as part of the program “Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration" at the Kennedy Center.

“Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration" tells the story of the historic Great Migration when millions of black Americans fled the South of the 20th century through music and the spoken word.

The concert, produced and presented by Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center’s artistic director for jazz, and his wife, mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for their “Migrations: The Making of America,” its New York City-based festival exploring people’s movements across America.

Farrah Jasmine Griffin is the chairwoman of Columbia University’s African American and African Diaspora Studies department and the William B. Ransford Professor of English & Comparative Literature and African-American Studies, Columbia University.

Racial Capitalism Co-Directors Awarded HWPI grant

The co-directors of CSSD working group Racial Capitalism, Jordan Camp, Christina Heatherton and Manu Vimalassery, have been awarded a Humanities War and Peace Initiative (HWPI) grant by Columbia University Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The HWPI will support a broad range of activities, including individual scholarship, new scholarly collaborations, projects and events within existing interdisciplinary and collaborative structures, teaching, community outreach and programming, performance and exhibition, and ongoing dialogue in other forms.  Generously supported by President Bollinger, this initiative aims to encourage creative thinking about the critical topic of war, with an ultimate goal of perpetuating a more peaceful world. 

More information about the HWPI grant can be found here.

CSSD working group director featured on the Dean’s Table podcast

Farrah J Griffin, Professor and chair of the University’s new Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, was recently featured on Episode 4 of The Dean’s Table with Dean Harris from the School of Social Sciences. Professor Griffin previously directed CSSD working group Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women and CSSD affiliate Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

Professor Griffin joins Dean Harris to discuss her scholarly trajectory into African-American studies, her research on the Black Migration and Harlem of the 1940s, and the establishment of the new Department of African-American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia.

Click here to listen! 

Professor Farrah J. Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English & Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia, and the chair of the University’s new Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Professor Griffin is a scholar and author of African American literature, music, history and politics.

The Dean's Table is the latest initiative of Dean Fredrick Harris, Dean of Social Sciences, Columbia University. This series features the lives, work, and imagination of scholars from across Columbia's social science disciplines.

Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence (RGFGV) convene major international workshop

On September 7 and 8 2018, CSSD working group Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence (RGFGV) convened the Global Governance of the Intimate conference, a major international workshop. This conference was the second in a series of international workshops that opened with workshop in Amman a year earlier, hosted at the Columbia Global Center | Middle East, Amman.

Participants and organizers who had presented at the Amman workshop opened the first session with an overview of how the three conceptual domains that had organized the earlier work of the project intersected with the new scholarship being presented.

Click here to read the full conference report.

Video from the conference is available here.

The RGFGV project seeks to track and analyze the growing prominence of the global agenda against “violence against women” (VAW) and “gender-based violence” (GBV), whether in international law and global governance, practical interventions, or international media coverage.

The RGFGV project is supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and is co-directed by Lila Abu-Lughod, Rema Hammami, Janet Jakobsen and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.

Menstrual Health Working Group Publishes Report on Developments at the UN

CSSD working group Menstrual Health and Gender Justice has published a report in Impakter highlighting the work the UN has done related to menstruation in the past year and what more is left to do. The publication was co-authored by Menstrual Health working group director and Lecturer in Human Rights at Columbia University, Inga Winkler, and Sydney Amoakoh, Human Rights MA candidate and working group fellow.  

In the article they address the key role governments play in advancing the discussion around menstrual health, noting that they are are uniquely positioned to normalize discussions on menstruation in the international community and amongst their own populations. The need for continued collaboration between different groups and sectors was also highlighted.

Read the full report here.

For more from the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group visit their blog.

Menstrual Health Working Group Fellow Participates in the UN 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women

Lauren Houghton, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and fellow in CSSD working group Menstrual Health and Gender Justice, participated in the panel “Access to Menstrual Health as a Public Service: The Lived Experiences of Women and Girls.”  The event took place as part of the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The panel stressed the importance of looking at the many menstruating women and girls who belong to marginalized groups, and their lived experiences with menstruation both in and outside of the home.

During the event Dr. Lauren Houghton gave insight on exactly how States and other actors can go about achieving change through the social normalization of menstruation. She stressed that policy-makers should avoid viewing providing menstruation products as quick fixes to more complex menstrual health issues.

A full recap of the panel can be found on the Menstrual Health working group blog.