Engendering the Archive Fellow Has Won the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize

Hazel Carby, Engendering the Archive and Women Mobilizing Memory working group fellow, has won the 2020 British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for for Global Cultural Understanding. This prize is awarded to works of non-fiction which contribute towards the cultural understanding of connections and divisions which shape identities across the world. Professor Carby’s book Imperial Intimacies: A Tale Of Two Islands (Verso Books, 2019) tells the story of her family in the context of British Empire.

To learn more about Professor Carby’s award click here.

Co-Director of the Gender & the Global Slum Working Group Has Been Named University Professor

Congratulations to Saidiya Hartman, former co-director of the Gender & the Global Slum and Engendering the Archive working groups, who has been named University Professor, Columbia’s highest academic honor.  President Bollinger, announcing her new title, wrote: "She brings a painstaking and unrelenting focus to retrieving and telling the lost stories of the dispossessed. Deploying the singularly powerful tool of her own invention - 'critical fabulation' - Saidiya weaves together a semi-nonfictional narrative from bits and shreds of historical data in order to give voice to those whose place in history has all too often been unfairly set aside." 

Professor Hartman has previously been the winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and has been a Fulbright, Rockefeller, Whitney Oates, and University of California President's Fellow.  Her most recent book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, was awarded a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Co-Director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women Working Group Has Been Presented with a Society of Columbia Graduates 2020 Great Teacher Award

The co-director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women working group, Farah Griffin has been presented with a Society of Columbia Graduates 2020 Great Teacher Award. Established in 1949, this award is given annually to honor a professor's ability to challenge and inspire undergraduates and to relate positively to students outside the classroom, as well as to recognize the faculty member's standing in their own academic discipline.

Women Mobilizing Memory Collective Solidarity Statement on Artsakh

As scholars, artists and activists who are part of the transnational feminist Women Mobilizing Memory Collective sponsored by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, we have studied the memories of violent histories in the interests of promoting peace, social justice, and a democratic future across the globe.

Today, we call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Nagorno- Karabagh.

On September 27, 2020, with the backing of the Turkish government (1) and the mobilization of Syrian mercenaries (2), Azerbaijan launched a military assault on Nagorno-Karabagh, an Armenian enclave known to its residents as Artsakh. The cease fire agreement of October 10 was immediately violated.

The decades-long political conflict over the status of this enclave has erupted again as a violent and destabilizing force that is visiting death and destruction on the people of the region at a moment when the world is reeling from the effects of a deadly pandemic. Critical resources that should be used to respond to people’s medical and economic needs have been diverted into war. What is more, Armenians in Turkey and the Diaspora have been made targets of hate crimes and hate speech.

Wars do not result only in death, displacement, injury and destruction, but they create deep wounds that are transmitted across generations. This region already has a long and painful history of such wounds. As part of our research and collaboration, we have learned a great deal from many individuals and institutions in the Caucasus who have been working diligently, creatively and collaboratively to heal these wounds and to cultivate a peaceful future. We would like to join our voices with the courageous voices of peace from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey who are calling for immediate ceasefire, a permanent cessation of aggression and a peaceful resolution to this conflict that will afford the people of Nagorno-Karabagh the right to determine their own future. (3-7)

It is our hope that rather than spreading into an ever more violent proxy war, this conflict can be brought to an immediate end. We call on the international community, including the governments of the United States, Russia, and Turkey, to work to end the violence immediately and to bring about a lasting settlement. A lasting settlement needs to end all human rights violations in the region and to give voice to women and other marginalized groups through the implementation of the UN Resolution 1325. (8)

1. What lies behind Turkish support for Azerbaijan
2. Syrians Make Up Turkey’s Proxy Army in Nagorno-Karabakh
3. CaucasusTalks
4. To stand for peace, in spite of everything
5. HDP MP Garo Paylan: There are no winners in war and no losers in peace
6. #PEACENOW #BARIŞİSTİYORUZ
7. Armenian, Azeri Youth Speak Out For Peace
8. What’s Really Driving the Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict

The Women Mobilizing Memory Collective at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, comprised of over 40 scholars, artists and activists from the United States, Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Germany, and Austria.

Co-Director of the Black Atlantic Ecologies Working Group Interviewed by Wave Hill

 Vanessa Agard Jones, co-director of Black Atlantic Ecologies,  spoke with Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin and Eileen Jeng Lynch at Wave Hill about a variety of topics including queer ecologies, fugitivity, toxicity, and decoloniality.  Professor Jones reflected on Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin’s Sunroom Project Space exhibition M for Membrane, which explores the membrane, mystery, and magic of microbial forms, fungi, and indigenous mold.

Co-Director of Geographies of Injustice to Speak at Institute of Latin American Studies Online Event

Professor Ana Paulina Lee, co-director of the Geographies of Injustice: Gender and the City working group,  will be moderating a conversation with Nilce Naira Nascimento and Sergio Suiama on November 5 from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM. Liberating the Sacred: Afro-Brazilian Religions, Cultural Heritage, and the Law is hosted by the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University.  Between 1889-1945, over 500 sacred objects were confiscated from Candomblé and Umbanda temples in Rio de Janeiro. For more than a century, the sacred objects were held at the building that once served as headquarters to the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), once the center for police administration, a prison, and a torture site, and now the headquarters for the Civil Police. In September 2020, after decades of struggle, the objects were transferred to the Museum of the Republic. This conversation revisits the history to liberate the sacred objects. Participants will discuss plans for the future of these sacred objects and address issues related to cultural belonging, law, appropriation, and heritage.

Unpayable Debt Working Group Co-director Profiled by Feminist Films in the Classroom

The Feminist Films in the Classroom’s piece, We Learn Together: A Conversation about Feminist Film Pedagogy with Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Elisabetta Diorio, is a biographical interview about Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner's life, teachings, and films. Professor Negrón-Muntaner, CSSD Executive Committee member and co-director of the Unpayable Debt working group, talks about some of her films such as AIDS in the Barrio (1989) and Brincando el Charco (1994). The piece also includes interviews with former students who have followed in her footsteps and relfect the impact of Professor Negrón-Muntaner’s work.

Transnational Black Feminisms Co-Director Featured in New Documentary

Premilla Nadasen, co-director of the Transnational Black Feminisms working group, was interviewed along with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the history of women’s rights and suffrage in the United States of America. The Nineteenth Amendment: A Woman’s Right to Vote was produced by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The film is about women’s long, difficult struggle to win the right to vote. It’s about citizenship, the power of the vote, and why women had to change the Constitution with the 19th Amendment to get the vote. 

Co-Director of the Queer Aqui Working Group interview by BBC Worldwide

The co-director of the Queer Aqui working group, Jack Halberstam, spoke with BBC Worldwide about the groundbreaking Hite Report, after the death of its author, Shere Hite. Shere Hite was a prominent feminist whose famous book, “The Hite Report: Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality" gave scientific credibility to the claims that women, especially white heterosexual women, were making about deep dissatisfaction with their domestic lives and heterosexual marriage. The book led to many discussions about the unequal relationship between women and men with regard to pleasure in a heteronormative dynamic and was an important part of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Former Co-Director of Pacific Climate Circuits Interviewed by El Fénix

Professor  Kevin Fellez, director of Studies on the Diaspora of Afro-Americans and Africans at Columbia University and co-director of former Center for the Study of Social Difference workin group, Pacific Climate Circuits , spoke with the Chilean newspaper, El Fénix in a piece titled, "I Can't Breathe": Accounts of Anti-racist Protests in the United States about systemic racism, police brutality, and the mainstream rhetoric that is used to justify police brutality.

Environmental Justice Working Group Co-Director Quoted in the Financial Times

Victoria Murrillo, Environmental Justice working group co-director, was quoted in the Financial Times article, Argentina’s political double act moves on to the next challenge by Benedict Mander. The article was discussed Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández and current Vice President/ Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and their struggle to manage the Argentine debt, recession, inflation and negotiations with the IMF.

Director of The Future of Disability Studies, Working Group Discusses Teaching in the Age of COVID

Former director of the Future of Disability Studies, and the Precision Medicine: Ethics Politics and Culture working groups,  Rachel Adams discusses her course “Comics, Health, and Embodiment” and its new relevance in the age of COVID, with Columbia News. The class looks at graphic narratives with a focus on embodied identities such as gender, sexuality, race, and age with recent additions of more comics by people of color in response to the BLM movement and graphic narratives that deal with experiences of health, illness, and disability in light of the current pandemic.

Queer Aqui Working Group Fellow was interviewed by major News Outlets About Recent Changes to the Supreme Court

Queer Aqui working group fellow and Professor of Law, Gender and Sexuality, Studies Katherine Franke has been interviewed widely about the U.S. Supreme Court, the tragic death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barret. Professor Franke has appeared in pieces for PIX 11, CNBC, Bloomberg, The New Republic, the Christian Science Monitor, and the AP.

Motherhood and Technology Co-Director Interviewed by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes

In a piece titled, Humanities in the Emergency Room, Rishi Goyal, Columbia University Medical Center emergency department physician and co-director of the Motherhood and Technology working group, was interviewed by Jason Rozumalski of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) about the importance of humanities in medical science and an interdisciplinary approach to health. 

Reframing Gendered Violence Working Group Fellow Published in Griffith Asia Insights

In the article, Dr. Fiona Hukula, Reframing Gendered Violence working group fellow,  writes about the extremely high levels of violence against women in Papua New Guinea,  the normalization of domestic violence, and the recent protests against gender-based violence.  Dr. Hukula also highlights some potential solutions which could reduce gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea.

Women Mobilizing Memory Working Group Co-Director Reviewed by the Los Angeles Review of Books

Marianne Hirsch, former director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference and Women Mobilizing Memory working group co-director, had her book, School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, reviewed in a piece titled, “The Institutional Gaze of the School” by the LA Review of Books. The book explores the history of school photos and their role within the ideological state apparatuses of hegemonic socio-political systems. School Photos in Liquid Time, co-authored by Leo Spitzer, offers a closer look at this genre of vernacular photography, tracing how photography advances ideologies of social assimilation as well as those of hierarchy and exclusion.

On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics Co-Director Recieves 2020 Nurses with Global Impact Award

Jennifer Dohrn, co-director for the CSSD Working Group On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics, was awarded the 2020 Nurses with Global Impact Award by Nursing with Global Impact, Inc. The award “recognizes and honors nurses in front line roles who demonstrate exemplary practice by impacting the global delivery of healthcare, celebrating their work and supporting their programs.”

To learn more, read here. 

To learn about Dohrn’s work with the CSSD working group, read here.

Motherhood and Technology Co-Director Pens Piece for Columbia News

Arden Hegele, co-director of the CSSD Motherhood and Technology working group, in her article, What We Can Learn from the Literature of Past Pandemics pulls lessons from classics such as Oedipus Rex, The Iliad, Daniel Defoe’s The Journal of the Plague Year, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death to help us better understand the COVID-19 epidemic. 

Updates from the Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence Working Group

Fellows from the working group on Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence have been busy writing critical work on the politics of gendered violence in fields ranging from Anthropology to Law and Public Policy. Although we have not been meeting in person, we wanted to keep the conversations going by sharing some of the Fellows’ recent scholarship and news. 

Working Group Fellows

Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology and IRWGS, Columbia University, and RGFGV Project Co-Director, delivered the 2019 Inaugural Anthropology Lecture at the University of Leuven. Titled “The Courage of Truth: Making Anthropology Matter,” Professor Abu-Lughod explores Foucault’s call for the “courage of truth” to reflect on her recent work as a form of engaged anthropology, focusing on her work on gender violence and security and on the settler colonial paradigm in Palestinian studies. In 2019-20, Professor Abu-Lughod also delivered three lectures based on her work for the RGFGV project: the 21st Annual B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture at the Center for Developing Developing Societies in Delhi, India, titled “Gender, Violence, Security, Circuits of Power and the Muslim Question,” “Security and the Political Geographies of Gender Violence” in the NYU Liberal Studies Global Lecture Series, and a lecture at Amherst College.

Nadje Al-Ali, Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University, co-edited a volume on Gender, Governance and Islam, to which she also contributed a chapter titled “Iraq: Gendering violence, sectarianisms and authoritarianism.” The Center for the Study of Social Difference co-sponsored the book launch, facilitated by Lila Abu-Lughod, with the editors of the volume. An interview with Deniz Kandiyoti, co-editor of Gender, Governance and Islam, can be found at Borderlines. Professor Al-Ali also published an article in Feminist Review on the challenges of discussing gender-based violence in relation to the Middle East, based on the paper she workshoped at our RGFGV confrence in New York. She co-wrote a chapter in Queer Asia (eds. Jonathan Daniel Luther and Jennifer Ung Loh) titled “Feminist and Queer Perspectives on West Asia.”

In 2019, Zahra Ali, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers, Newark, published an article for Contemporary Islam titled “Being a young British Iraqi Shii in London: exploring diasporic cultural and religious identities between Britain and Iraq.” Using ethnographic research conducted in London, Baghdad, and Najaf-Kufa, Professor Ali analyzes young British Iraqi Shiis experiences of belonging in relation to religious and cultural identities.

Qudsiya Contractor, Junior Fellow at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, contributed a chapter to Gender, Caste, and the Imagination of Equality, edited by Anupama Rao, titled “Muslim women, caste and the beef ban in Mumbai.” For Economic and Political Weekly, Dr. Contractor critiques recent Indian Supreme Court rulings on religious freedoms and women’s rights. She expanded on this work with an article for The Wire on the criminalization of the triple talaq, which examines the tensions between religious rights and Indian Supreme Court judgements in the pursuit of protecting women.

Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, co-edited Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field, and co-authored a chapter with Libby Adler titled “‘You Play, You Pay:’ Feminists and Child Support Enforcement in the United States.” Professor Halley was interviewed by the New York Times about the Trump administration rules on sexual misconduct on college campuses.

Rema Hammami, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Women’s Studies of Birzeit University and RGFGV Project Co-Director, contributed an article to Current Anthropology titled “Destabilizing Mastery and the Machine: Palestinian Agency and Gendered Embodiment at Israeli Military Checkpoints.”  She also had a chapter in Janet Halley et. al.’s Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field (2019) entitled “Follow the Numbers: Global Governmentality and the Violence Against Women Agenda in Occupied Palestine.”

Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, published two articles. “Death by Benevolence: Third World Girl and the Contemporary Politics of Humanitarianism” in Feminist Theory, which examines the production of the “third world girl” through menstrual health and female genital mutilation campaigns. In “Re-animating Muslim women’s auto/biographical writings: Hayat-e-Ashraf as a palimpsest of educated selves,” published in Third World Thematics, Professor Khoja-Moolji resists dominant tropes of the 19th century Indian Muslim woman as silent and uneducated by re-purposing Muslim women’s auto/biographical writings from this time. 

Vasuki Nesiah, legal scholar and Associate Professor of Practice at NYU Gallatin, contributed a chapter to Janet Halley et al’s edited volume of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field titled “Indebted: The Cruel Optimism of Leaning-In to Empowerment.” Professor Nesiah and Dina Siddiqi, RGFGV Fellow, were both panelists for the NYU Border Talks series that explored conceptual approaches to borders and mobility.

Rupal Oza, Associate Professor in the Department for Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, who presented at our RGFGV workshop in New York in October 2018 on her study of the increase in “false rape cases” with the National Crime Records Bureau in India, is published this as an article, “Sexual Subjectivity in Rape Narratives: Consent, Credibility, and Coercion in Rural Haryana” forthcoming in the Autumn 2020 issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 

Sima Shakhsari, RGFGV Fellow and Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, published a book in January 2020 called The Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan. The book investigates the online and off-line network of Iranian blogs, known as Weblogistan, and analyzes the politics of civil resistance, the internet as an imperial democratization project, and hegemonic impositions of gendered, sexed, and racial subjectivities. An interview with Professor Shakhsari, as well as an excerpt from their book, can be found on Jadaliyya.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, RGFGV project co-director and Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Chair in Global Law at Queen Mary University of London, published a book, Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding in 2019. Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s award-winning book utilizes archival, historical, and ethnographic material to examine the governance of childhood under military occupation and violations of children’s rights in Palestine. More recently, Professor Shalhoub-Kervorkian also published “Gun to Body: Mental health against unchilding” in the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.

Dina Siddiqi, Clinical Associate Professor at NYU in Liberal Studies, penned an article for The Daily Star on labor organizing in the Bangladesh garment industry, and the historic tensions between trade unions and national interests. Along with RGFGV Fellow Vasuki Nesiah, Professor Siddiqi was a panelist for the NYU Border Talks series that explored conceptual approaches to borders and mobility. Professor Siddiqi was also interviewed in the Huffington Post about the Shaheen Bagh protests in opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act in India.

Aditi Surie von Czechowski, Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, wrote an article for Cultural Anthropology called “Together in the Flesh.” Dr. Surie von Czechowski draws on her fieldwork in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania to explore laughter as an embodied practice that “engenders togetherness in the flesh.”

Shahla Talebi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University, published an article in PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. In “Ethnography of Witnessing and Ethnography as Witnessing: Topographies of Two Court Hearings,” Professor Talebi draws on ethnographic and archival research to examine two hearings in Iranian courts involving the persecution of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s. 

Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, and Faculty Director of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California Berkeley,published “Protecting the Nation from ‘Honor Killings:’ the Construction of a Problem” for Constitutional Commentary. 

Dubravka Zarkov, Associate Researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen and co-editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies recently wrote an editorial titled, “On economy, health, and politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic” for the upcoming issue of the European Journal of Women’s Studies. Professor Zarkov also published an editorial on contemporary dissonance within global feminist movements, and an editorial on reading contemporary news stories as fairy tales, utopias, or critical dystopias.

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Media Fellows

In 2018 and 2019, recipients of the CSSD media fellowship were supported to travel to the Middle East or South Asia to research stories that could reframe perspectives on the relationships between gender-based violence and religion. Since then, the fellows have published a range of editorials and articles.

Yasmin El-Rifae, an editor at Mada Masr and co-producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature, published a piece on the high rates of cesarean section births in Egypt. This article looks into the political and economic factors within the healthcare industry that contribute to the rise of c-sections, and uses personal testimony of women presented with the choice of a cesarean section.

Rafia Zakaria, author of Against White Feminism (2017) and The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (2015), wrote an analysis for Adi Magazine on the ways in which American anti-FGM (female genital mutilation) campaigns are harnessed to justify the legal exclusion of Black and brown people through ICE operations and executive orders. She wrote a New York Times book review of Hossein Kamaly’s new book, A History of Islam in 21 Women, as well as an article for The Nation on the dangers of “stay-at-home” orders for survivors of domestic violence.

Samira Shackle published an article in Elle UK detailing harassment and blackmail faced by Pakistani women online. The article outlines the limitations to global privacy standards on social media platforms, and the consequences that women may experience for reporting cybercrimes. 

Maryam Saleh, a reporter with The Intercept, penned an article on the ways in which war and displacement have cultivated new circumstances for Syrian women to address patriarchy and sexual violence in innovative ways. On Their Own Terms investigates the onset of humanitarian programs that arose as a result of Syria’s ongoing conflict, and the ways in which they fulfill, or brush up against, the demands of Syrian women who are pushing for deeper political change. 

Mona Sinha to be Featured Speaker in Democratic National Convention Virtual Event

Mona Sinha, member of the Women Creating Change Leadership Council (WCCLC), was elected as the Board Chair of the ERA Fund for Women’s Equality. Mona will be a featured speaker in Electing Equality: The Final Push for the Equal Rights Amendment, a virtual event of the Democratic National Convention sponsored by the ERA Coalition and the Feminist Majority.

To register and learn more about this event celebrating Women’s Suffrage and the ERA, click here.