Souleymane Bachir Diagne in Christian Science Monitor
Professor Diagne commented on the Nairobi National Museum’s new exhibit highlighting the Kenyan art stolen in the colonial era.
Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne commented on the Nairobi National Museum’s new “Invisible Inventories” exhibit highlighting the European colonial-era theft of Kenyan art. Professor Diagne told Christan Science Monitor: “The movement is snowballing. There’s a public pressure now that wasn’t there before.”
Professor Diagne, a Senegalese philosopher and Columbia professor of Philosophy and French, was a member of CSSD’s working group Bandung Humanisms.
Vanessa Agard-Jones Lectures on Ephemera at Wesleyan University
In “Empirical Ephemera,” Professor Agard-Jones used the concept-metaphor of sand to consider how coloniality is made material.
Assistant Professor Vanessa Agard-Jones gave a lecture on “Empirical Ephemera” at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Humanities. She explored the ways that colonality is made material, and how we might use sand as a tool for thinking an ephemeral archive, empirically.
Agard-Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia, co-director of CSSD’s Black Atlantic Ecologies working group, and member of the Queer Aqui and former Reframing Gendered Violence and Science and Social Difference working groups.
Meredith Gamer Lectures at Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Assistant Professor Gamer’s two online lectures focused on the works of artist William Hogarth.
Assistant Professor Meredith Gamer participated in this year’s Yale University Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Artist in Focus Public Lecture Series. Professor Gamer’s lectures focused on two works by etching artist William Hogarth: Industry and Idleness (1747) and The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751). Assistant Professor of Art History, Gamer is a member of CSSD’s Motherhood and Technology working group.
Watch the full lectures here.
Elections to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Congratulations to Professors Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Mabel O. Wilson on joining the Academy.
Congratulations to University Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Associate Professor Mabel O. Wilson on their election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Spivak is University Professor and Founder of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia, and former co-director of CSSD working group The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, Statistics and Stories.
Wilson is Associate Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia, and a member of former CSSD working groups Engendering the Archive and Reframing Gendered Violence.
Lila Abu-Lughod Delivered A Webinar On Gender Violence
This webinar was part of a virtual event series entitled Theory From The Margins
Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, Reframing Gendered Violence working group fellow, delivered a webinar on "Gender from the Margins: The Geopolitics of Gender Violence" as part of a series hosted by the Theory from the Margins project. Professor Abu-Lughod spoke on her work, including the forthcoming collection The Cunning of Gender Violence.
Check out the Webinar Here.
Office of the Provost Mid-Career Faculty Grant
Congratulations to Spring 2021 Grant awardees Kevin Fellezs (Music), Natasha Lightfoot (History), and Camille Robcis (French, History).
We are pleased to congratulate CSSD working group members Kevin Fellezs, Natasha Lightfoot and Camille Robcis on receiving a Spring 2021 Columbia Office of the Provost Mid-Career Faculty Grant in recognition of significant contributions to their fields.
Kevin Fellezs received the grant for his work on The Love Song in Black Popular Music, 1945-2000. He is Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology & African American & African Diaspora Studies and former co-director of CSSD’s Pacific Climate Circuits: Moving Beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Economics working group.
Assistant Professor Natasha Lightfoot received the grant for work on her project, Fugitive Cosmopolitans and the Making of the Black Atlantic. She teaches Caribbean, Atlantic World, and African Diaspora History, and was a member of CSSD’s former Digital Black Atlantic working group.
Associate Professor Camille Robcis received the grant for her forthcoming project, tentatively titled The Gender Question: Populism, National Reproduction, and the Crisis of Representation, in which she explores the protests against the so-called “theory of gender” and their conceptual links to populism. She teaches modern European intellectual history, and is a member of CSSD working group Queer Aqui.
New Social Engagement Projects at the Center for the Study of Social Difference
These new groups will build on established CSSD projects in alignment with Columbia University's Fourth Purpose.
The Center for the Study of Social Difference is proud to announce the inaugural recipients of CSSD’s Social Engagement Grants, The Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Repair and Reconstructing History in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro and Dharavi, Mumbai. Each of these new projects are lead by current and former CSSD working directors and to build on the work of CSSD groups, moving that work toward new forms of public engagement and partnerships, in alignment with Columbia University's Fourth Purpose. To learn more about each of these projects visit their project pages linked above.
Saidiya Hartman Receives PEN America Literary Award
Professor Hartman was announced as one of the 2021 Award Winners for her recent book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals.
Saidiya Hartman Receives PEN America Literary Award
We are pleased to congratulate Saidiya Hartman, former co-director of the Gender & the Global Slum and Engendering the Archive working groups, on receiving a PEN America Literary Award for her recent book. Professor Hartman was a recipient of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for her book entitled Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals.
Read more about her book and this special distinction here.
Kevin Fellezs in The Guardian
Professor Fellezs commented on protest songs and “freedom musics” in this polarized time
Informed by his work on the intersections of music and collective liberation, Professor Kevin Fellezs commented on “freedom musics” in The Guardian’s article on rightwing co-optations of protest songs.
Kevin Fellezs is Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology & African American & African Diaspora Studies and former co-director of CSSD’s Pacific Climate Circuits: Moving Beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Economics working group.
CSSD Faculty Recipients of Guggenheim Fellowship
We are excited to announce that Paige West, CSSD Director, and Farah Griffin, former co-director of a Women Creating Change working group, have been named 2021 Fellows for their extraordinary and productive scholarship.
CSSD Faculty Recipients of Guggenheim Fellowship
The Center for the Study of Social Difference proudly congratulates Paige West, Director of CSSD, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, co-director of past Women Creating Change working group Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. This follows up Paige's honor just earlier this year as one of 50 Explorers Changing the World.
We are fortunate to have the leadership of these incredible scholars at our Center. Our faculty are doing outstanding work, and it is wonderful to see them receive these well-deserved honors.
Congratulations Paige and Farah!
The full list of 2021 Guggenheim Fellows can be found here.
Anupama Rao Participates in Panel Discussion on Historian Sumit Guha’s book
The co-director of the Geographies of Injustice working group spoke about the book History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000.
Anupama Rao, co-director of the Geographies of Injustice working group, was a discussant for a recent virtual book talk event highlighting the historian Sumit Guha’s work History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000.
Farah Jasmine Griffin Contributes Essay to the collection Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
This piece by the Toward An Intellectual History Of Black Women working group director focuses on the Harlem Renaissance.
Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin, co-director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women working group, contributed an essay on the Harlem Renaissance to the collection Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain.
Professor Griffin’s essay can be found here.
Motherhood and Technology working group fellow publishes book review in Public Books
Emily Bloom wrote a review of Emma Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars.
Motherhood and Technology working group fellow, Emily Bloom wrote about gothic literature's ability to convey the claustrophobia of motherhood during a pandemic in her review of Emma Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars, in Public Books.
To learn more about the work of Motherhood and Technology and its fellows visit the working group page here.
Rachel Adams interviewed by the Spectator and Columbia News
The director of the Future of Disability Studies working group spoke about how she has updated her class for the pandemic.
Director of the Future of Disability Studies, and the Precision Medicine: Ethics Politics and Culture working groups, Rachel Adams was featured in two articles in which she discussed the ways she has updated her courses to adapt to current pandemic-related issues. She discussed her course "Comics, Health, and Embodiment" in Columbia News, and her "Advanced Topics in Medical Humanities" course in Spectator.
Co-director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women working group interviewed by Columbia News
Farah Jasmine Griffin spoke about the meaning of Black History Month in our current moment
Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin, co-director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women working group, spoke about the meaning of Black History Month in our current moment with Columbia News.
Director of the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group interviewed by NPR
Inga Winkler discussed combating period stigma and created a zine with the author of the article
Inga Winkler, director of the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group, was interviewed by NPR for the article, A Menstrual Expert's Surprising Tips On How To Talk About Your Period. The article also included a zine co-written by Inga Winkler and Malaka Gharib, which provides tips on how to fight menstrual stigma.
For more on Inga Winkler’s work on Menstruation and Gender Justice visit the working group blog. https://periodsatcolumbia.com/
Frances Negron-Muntaner Interviewed by WNYC’s The Takeaway Podcast
The co-director of the Unpayable Debt working group spoke about the financial future of Puerto Rico.
Professor Frances Negron-Muntaner, co-director of the Unpayable Debt working group, was interviewed on WNYC's The Takeaway podcast about the financial future of Puerto Rico under the Biden administration.
Tey Meadow and L.A. Paul Co-author New Article Published by Texte Zur Kunst
This piece, by the Queer Aqui working fellow, reflects on life experiences during the pandemic lockdown.
Sociologist and Queer Aqui working group fellow, Tey Meadow and philosopher L.A. Paul co-authored a chronicle of their different experiences during the past year of pandemic lockdown. Among the piece's considerations are the authors' reflections on new attunements to time and subjectivity as well as greater attention to small experiences.
The full piece can be read here.
Columbia University Partners with Howard University to Launch New Collaborative Black Studies Book Series, Diversity Program
Kevin Fellezs and Farah Jasmine Griffin will be editorial board members for this historic collaboration.
Columbia University Press, in collaboration with Howard University’s College of Arts and Sciences and Columbia's Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, is launching a new Black studies book series, with additional plans to recruit students for careers in the publishing industry. Co-director of the Pacific Climate Circuits working group, Kevin Fellezs, and co-director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, Farah Jasmine Griffin, will be two of the four editorial board members representing Columbia in this historic collaboration.