Saidiya Hartman Receives MacArthur “Genius Grant”
Former co-director of Engendering the Archive one of 26 fellows for 2019.
Last month, the MacArthur Foundation announced its 2019 MacArthur Fellows (the fellowship is known colloquially as a “genius grant”). Among the recipients is Saidiya Hartman, former co-director of the Engendering the Archive working group. Professor Hartman was also a speaker at the CSSD 10 year anniversary symposium What We CAN Do When There's Nothing to Be Done.
The MacArthur Fellowship is “a $625,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential.” The MacArthur foundation calls Professor Hartman’s work “meticulous” and “inventive,” noting that she “has influenced an entire generation of scholars.”
Read their description of her work here.
Save the Date for Columbia Giving Day! October 23, 2019
This Columbia Giving Day, stand for scholars, artists, and activists working together across disciplines.
Masha Gessen, Marianne Hirsch, and Lyndsey Stonebridge at the CSSD Anniversary Symposium
This Columbia Giving Day, stand for scholars, artists, and activists working together across disciplines.
The Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD) relies on individual donations to power the impact of our interdisciplinary research. Wednesday, October 23 is Columbia Giving Day 2019, and you can contribute to two funds that support the work of CSSD:
Center for the Study of Social Difference fund - supports all of the faculty research, programming, public impact, and work on social justice issues at the Center, which houses the Women Creating Change initiative
Women Creating Change fund - specifically supports our projects and programs with a focus on contemporary global problems affecting women and on the roles women play in addressing these problems
Learn more and save the date HERE.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Jack Halberstam at the CSSD Anniversary Symposium
Participants in the Valor Y Cambio project of CSSD working group Unpayable Debt
CalArts MA Aesthetics and Politics Program Announces Saidiya Hartman as 2021 Theorist in Residence
The position includes private workshops and public lectures.
Earlier this year, the California Institute of the Arts announced their Theorist in Residence for 2021: Saidiya Hartman, former co-director Engendering the Archive. The initiative invites “theorists focusing on media, urban or global studies to spend up to two weeks at CalArts to teach workshops, faculty seminars and give a public lecture.” Previous Theorists in Residence include N. Katherine Hayles, Judith Butler, and Lauren Berlant. Saidiya Hartman is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Women's and Gender Studies at Columbia University.
Film and TV Rights Picked up for Karl Jacoby’s Book About Slave-Turned-Millionaire in Turn-of-the-Century America
The Strange Career of William Ellis first came out in 2016 and won the Ray Allen Billington Prize and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award.
Deadline reports that indie filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez has optioned the film and TV rights for The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire, the 2016 book by Karl Jacoby, current Executive Committee member at CSSD. Ellis was an African-American businessman who “passed” as Mexican to become an exceptionally wealthy Wall Street banker. Rodriguez, best known for his biographical documentaries on race, art, and politics, is quoted as saying:
“Karl Jacoby’s stranger-than-fiction historical biography unfolds the private life and social world of a bold, but enigmatic figure who flitted in and out of an astonishing array of his era’s most noteworthy events. His journey will resonate in today’s climate in which we are again rewriting the rules of race and identity.”
'Valor y Cambio’ Art Installation and Alternative Currency Project Featured in Multiple Publications and TV Interview
Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s project wrapped up its East Harlem run on September 30.
The “Valor y Cambio” (Value and Change) project grew out of Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s Unpayable Debt working group, surveying spaces historically and contemporarily affected by debt, from her native Puerto Rico, to Detroit, Greece, and more. Negrón-Muntaner is a filmmaker and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and former Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.
The interactive installation, which will return to Puerto Rico after its recent stint in New York, allows participants to speak into an ATM that records their perspectives on what they value. It then dispenses an alternative currency, which was accepted at various local partner businesses during its time in New York. The currency (“the pesos of Puerto Rico”) is, in itself, also an art piece, featuring the stories of poets, athletes, doctors, activists, educators, and youth leaders.
Read more about “Valor y Cambio” in Repeating Islands and the Columbia Spectator. Watch a Spanish-language interview with Negrón-Muntaner on the Univison website.
Vicky Murillo Interviews Ana Ochoa for Latin America @ Columbia Podcast
Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean working group co-directors discuss major themes around Latin American history, culture, and politics.
Vicky Murillo, professor of Political Science and International Affairs interviewed fellow Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean working group co-director Professor and Chair of the Department of Music, Ana Ochoa. The interview can be found on the new podcast Latin @ Columbia, hosted by Vicky Murillo, discussing major themes around Latin American history, culture, and politics.
Find the full podcast interview here.
For more on the Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean working group visit their project page.
Vicky Murillo is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University. Her work focuses on distributive politics, electoral behavior, institutional weakness, Latin American politics, agricultural and conservation policies.
Dr. Ana Ochoa is an ethnomusicologist in the departments of Music and Anthropology at Columbia University. She writes on music and cultural policy, forced silence and armed conflict, and genealogies of listening and sound in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her current projects explore the bioacoustics of life and death in colonial histories of the Americas.
Dr. Sonia Tolani Gives Heart Health Tips on ABC
Co-director of the Women's Heart Disease Awareness working group appears on TV.
Dr. Sonia Tolani appeared on the ABC lunchtime program Strahan, Sarah & Keke earlier this year. Click here for more.
Love My Heart App Featured in Article About Heart Disease in Women
The app is the brainchild of the Women's Heart Disease Awareness working group.
Dr. Natalie Bello and Dr. Sonia Tolani, project directors of the working group, launched the app in May of 2019 to raise awareness amongst women about—and to prevent—heart disease. The app “helps the user devise a plan with realistic goals to support healthy weight, healthy diet, exercise, and smoking cessation.” Read the article here.
Chris Bobel Quoted on the Topic of Menstrual Activism
Menstrual Health working group fellow appears on Equal Times.
“Shame, silence and secrecy, after all, is the root of what makes menstruation a challenge for everyone, especially those living on the margins,”says Chris Bobel, Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group faculty fellow. Read more in Equal Times here, on the topic of menstrual dignity and justice, directly related to the CSSD working group.
Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s Art Installation and Alternative Currency Comes to East Harlem
The project will be on view at El Museo del Barrio from September 21 to 30, 2019.
CSSD Executive Committee member, and former Unpayable Debt working group co-director, Frances Negrón-Muntaner brings her interactive art installation to East Harlem for 10 days at the end of this September. Originally launched in Puerto Rico, the project was also shown in the Lower East Side before coming to El Barrio.
Born in response to the Puerto Rican debt crisis, and building on the work of the Unpayable Debt working group, the Valor y Cambio project proposes an alternative currency that, thanks to the participation of local establishments, is usable to buy products from food to museum tickets. Read more here, and visit the project’s website here.
Anupama Rao Organizes Second Annual Ambedkar Lectures
The first event of the series, on ‘Race, Caste, and American Pragmatism’, is to take place on October 17.
The Institute of Comparative Literature and Society will host the Second Annual Ambedkar Lectures, the first event of which takes place on October 17. The Ambedkar Lectures are organized by Geographies of Injustice co-director Anupama Rao.
Read more about the event here.
New Blog Post on Working Group Research Trip to West Africa
On the Frontlines Coordinator, Jeremy Orloff, reflects on recent experiences in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics working group Coordinator, Jeremy Orloff, reflects on his recent experiences in Freetown, Sierra Leone and Morovia, Liberia in a blog post for CSSD blog, Social Difference Online. The working group’s trip to West Africa centered around their efforts to retrieve oral histories from local nurses and midwives who had been active during the 2014-2016 Ebola crisis.
To read the full post and see pictures from the trip visit Social Difference Online.
Menstrual Health and Gender Justice Working Group Receives Teaching Award
The Provost’s Interdisciplinary Teaching Award will go toward developing a course on “Menstruation, Gender, and Rights: Interdisciplinary Approaches.”
The Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group is one of three winners for the annual Provost’s Interdisciplinary Teaching Award, which funds the creation of a new course with up to $20,000. The course will be taught by working group Faculty Fellows Noémie Elhadad, Lauren Houghton, Anja Tolonen, Chris Bobel and Director Inga Winkler, each from different disciplines. More information on the course, “Menstruation, Gender, and Rights: Interdisciplinary Approaches,” will be made available on course listings in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, read more here.
More on the Spring 2019 Interdisciplinary Teaching Awardees can be found here.
For more on the Menstrual Health working group check out their blog, like them on Facebook and follow on Twitter.
Frances Negrón-Muntaner Gives Interviews and Writes Article on Political Dissent in Puerto Rico
CSSD Executive Committee member appears on The Takeaway, CNN en Español, and Dissent Magazine.
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, CSSD Executive Committee member, and former Unpayable Debt working group co-director Frances Negrón-Muntaner (CSER) gave two interviews, one on WNYC’s The Takeaway and another on CNN en Español, about recent protests in Puerto Rico that led to the resignation of now-former governor Ricardo Rosselló. She also wrote a piece on frustrated expectations and newfound hope in the wake of the protests for Dissent Magazine.
Call for Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture 2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship Applications
Applications due by September 23, 2019
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture
2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship
Columbia University’s working group on Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture (PMEPC) is seeking graduate fellows for the 2019-2020 academic year. Graduate students from any of Columbia’s schools whose work is related to any aspect of precision medicine are invited and encouraged to apply.
Project Description:
Precision Medicine—an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person—raises a myriad of cultural, political, and historical questions that the humanities are uniquely positioned to address. As part of its overall Precision Medicine Initiative, and specifically, it’s Precision Medicine & Society arm, Columbia has initiated a broad based exploration of questions that precision medicine raises in law, ethics, the social sciences, and the humanities, which establishes the University as the center for scholarship relating to precision medicine and society. The Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture Project is the first of its kind to bring Columbia faculty from the humanities, social sciences, law, and medicine into dialogue with leading scholars from the United States and abroad to discuss how social scientific and humanistic questions might enhance our understanding of the ethical, social, legal, and political implications of precision medicine research, and to inform social scientists and humanists about evidence, evaluation, and research outcomes from serious interdisciplinary engagement with this emerging medical field.
The working group provides an excellent opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary discussion, networking, and other work related to recent developments and the future of precision medicine and society. The project is co-directed by Maya Sabatello, LLB, PhD (Columbia University Irving Medical Center) and Gil Eyal, PhD (Columbia’s Department of Sociology).
Fellowship Requirements:
Graduate fellows will be expected to attend all meetings (4 public events followed by 4 working group meetings led by visiting scholars during the academic year); read circulated materials prior to the meetings and take part in conversation; provide an oral response to one of the scheduled speakers; write a short blog about that event; assist with promotion and publicity for meetings on Columbia’s campuses; and otherwise support and facilitate the work of the group. In addition, graduate fellows will work with the PMEPC’s directors to develop a manuscript on a topic related to precision medicine and society and present on it to the working group and the Precision Medicine & Society Steering Committee.
The schedule for the public events is enclosed. The working group meetings will take place in the morning following the public event.
Fellows will receive a $2,500 stipend for the year. Only Columbia graduate students are eligible. Applicants with disabilities and applicants belonging to minority groups are encouraged to apply.
To apply, please submit your CV and a one-page letter describing your research interests, skills and how the PMEPC’s Graduate Fellowship will advance your professional trajectory to Daniel Wojtkiewicz (dnw2116@columbia.edu) by Sep. 23, 2019. Questions about this fellowship and the project more generally can be sent to the directors’, Maya and Gil as well. Successful applicants will be notified by Oct. 7, 2019.
Listen to Chris Bobel on The Takeaway Podcast
Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group fellow discusses workplace menopause policies.
Chris Bobel, Menstrual Health working group fellow and Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, along with Deborah Garlick, director of Menopause in the Workplace, joined The Takeaway podcast to discuss the glaring disparity between US and UK workplace menopause policies. In both countries, women over 45 make up a significant part of the workforce. Many such women are negatively affected by physical and psychological changes of menopause while at work. Whereas no politicians have taken up this cause in the US, in the UK politicians of both major parties have begun to address the lack of policies to help menopausal women.
Find the full podcast here.
For more on the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group visit their blog and project page.
You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.
Chris Bobel’s latest book is The Managed Body: Developing Girls and Menstrual Health in the Global South.
Tey Meadow Named Finalist for the 2018 C. Wright Mills Award
Queer Theory working group fellow’s book Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century up for prestigious honor.
Tey Meadow, Associate Professor of Sociology and member of CSSD working group Queer Theory, was named a finalist for the 2018 C. Wright Mills Award for her new book Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018). The Society for the Study of Social Problems gives out the award, established in 1964, to works that best exemplify outstanding social science research.
See the full list of finalists here.
For more on the Queer Theory working group visit their project page.
Geographies of Injustice Working Group Co-directors Awarded Funding by the Social Science Research Council
Professors Ana Paulina Lee and Anupama Rao have been announced as inaugural grantees of New Interdisciplinary Projects in the Social Sciences.
Professors Ana Paulina Lee and Anupama Rao, co-directors of the Geographies of Injustice working group, have been announced as inaugural grantees of New Interdisciplinary Projects in the Social Sciences for their project “Reconstructing Memory in Dharavi, Mumbai and Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro.”
The full announcement can be found here.
Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner Pens Article for Dissent Magazine
Unpayable Debt co-director addresses the recent historic protests in Puerto Rico.
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 to be held November 22, 2019. Deadline for abstracts is August 30, 2019
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).