Barnard Center for Research on Women

By Barnard Center for Research on Women

Society & Culture Science & Medicine Education History Philosophy Social Sciences Higher Education

What's Barnard Center for Research on Women about?

The Barnard Center for Research on Women hosts

a programming series that explores a wide range of feminist and

social justice issues like women's rights, gender and sexuality,

democracy and voting, immigration and economics. Featured speakers

include Angela Davis, Estelle Freedman, Lani Guinier, Josephine

Ho, Naomi Klein and Dean Spade. Fusing scholarship with activism, highlights from these events

are now available as podcasts.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Barnard Center for Research on Women episodes:

01.30.2013
Young Feminists Take on Activism and Organizing
In this panel, young feminist activists discuss their areas of interest, what they see as the major challenges for feminist movements, how organizing today compares to that by previous generations, intersections between feminism and other approaches to social justice, and how to build coalitions...
12.06.2012
Sonia Pierre and the Struggle for Citizenship in the Dominican Republic
Sonia Pierre (1963-2011), mobilized communities in the Dominican Republic to advocate for citizenship and human rights for Dominicans of Haitian descent. As the director of Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitiana (MUDHA), she used legal challenges in domestic and international courts to defend the citizenship rights...
11.07.2012
Ntozake Shange on Stage and Screen
The 2012-13 Africana Distinguished Alumna Series honors one of Barnard’s most distinguished African American alumnae: Ntozake Shange '70. A playwright, poet, and novelist of startling originality, Shange is best known for her 1975 Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When...
10.23.2012
Janice Haaken
Since visual images invoke the spectator's experience of unmediated access to the inner world of the subject, the evocative power of photographic images may readily reproduce forms of voyeurism. This under-theorizing becomes particularly problematic in projects that document the lives of migratory and marginalized...
10.18.2012
Staking Our Claim: Trans Women's Literature in the 21st Century
Celebrating the release of The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard (Topside Press, 2012), four of the volume's contributors, Ryka Aoki, Imogen Binnie, Red Durkin, and Donna Ostrowsky come together to read from their work. Following the readings, the writers discuss future...
10.15.2012
Dorothy Roberts
Some writers have celebrated a new biological citizenship arising from individuals' unprecedented ability to manage their health at the molecular level. In this year’s Helen Pond McIntyre '48 lecture, Dorothy Roberts examines the role of race and gender in the construction of this new...
10.09.2012
Feminist Knowledge Production in Digital Communities
Feminist writers discuss what the new digital landscape means for them - how to deal with a constant barrage of critiques and suggestions, how race and gender impact the ways communities form online, the ethics of live-tweeting academic conferences, and more. From #twittergate to...
10.04.2012
Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a legal anthropologist specializing in Islamic law, gender, and development. She is currently Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, University of London. In this lecture, Dr. Mir-Hosseini explores the Islamic feminist movement's potential for...
03.21.2012
Private Bodies, Public Texts: A Salon in Honor of Karla FC Holloway
The second event in BCRW's newly inaugurated Salon Series features Karla FC Holloway, Tina Campt, Farah Griffin, Saidiya Hartman, Rebecca Jordan-Young, and Alondra Nelson. These scholars, whose expertise lies at the cross-section of law, race, gender, and bioethics, respond to Karla FC Holloway’s new...
03.03.2012
The Scholar and Feminist 2012: Theorizing Vulnerability Studies
How does a shift from focusing on the 'autonomous and independent subject' to a framework of shared vulnerability transform intellectual, legal, and activist terrains? This interdisciplinary panel explores how our ideas of personhood, the state, politics, organizing, religion, consciousness, arts, and ethics change...
03.03.2012
The Scholar and Feminist 2012: Opening Remarks by Elizabeth Castelli
BCRW Acting Director Elizabeth Castelli delivers opening remarks at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2012, Vulnerability: The Human and the Humanities.
03.01.2012
Marion Nestle
Advice about diet and health is extraordinarily controversial for reasons of science and politics. Human nutritional science is difficult to conduct and interpret. Advice about what to eat affects the ability of food companies to sell products. The result is cacophony in the...
02.15.2012
Voices of a Women's Health Movement
The recently published anthology Voices of A Women's Health Movement (Seven Stories Press, 2012), co-edited by women's health advocate Barbara Seaman (1935-2008) and her longtime collaborator Laura Eldridge, brings together an essential collection of essays, interviews, and commentary by leading activists, writers, doctors and...
11.01.2011
What's On Your Plate? The History and Politics of Food
How much do you know about the food you eat? Food production and the politics surrounding it have an enormous impact on our environment and economy. In recent years, scientists and activists have raised concerns about the sustainability and security of our food systems...
10.11.2011
Rebecca Jordan-Young
Since the women's health movement blossomed in the 1970s, there has been an ever-increasing trend toward examining all aspects of human health for evidence of sex differences. But some of the movement's major achievements - such as a federal mandate to collect and analyze...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Building and Rebuilding Societies in Africa
From writing new constitutions to serving in local and national governance to sustaining NGOs and grassroots organizations to making policy changes, women and feminist groups in Africa are doing the difficult work of pushing local, state and international bodies to implement and guarantee gender...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: The Feminist Ethnographer's Dilemma
Does a feminist perspective limit researchers' abilities to see and interpret empirical realities? What happens when these perspectives clash with the reality of field observations? A group of ethnographers discuss how their feminist perspectives can both limit and enhance their ability to analyze power...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Activist Research - Working in Communities
What does it mean to be an activist researcher? What are some of the challenges of conducting research about social movements and within activist communities? Drawing on ethnographic and teaching experiences, panelists discuss their research on different communities and social movements, and how their...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Campus Activism
Colleges and universities are experiencing the effects of the economic downturn and our political climate in numerous ways. This panel of students and faculty discuss how activists on their campuses are working to combat budget cuts and the undermining of the public sector, provide...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Academic / Activist Partnerships in Mexico
What types of projects are possible when scholars and activists work together? Scholars in the Gender Studies Program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have formed partnerships with activist groups to address issues like state oppression and violence, struggles for land rights and...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Using Knowledge, Advancing Activism
How can activists use knowledge to advance their campaigns? How can scholars and activists work collaboratively to produce and promote knowledge that is grounded in feminist and social justice frameworks? Activists who have been able to produce and use knowledge to initiate change across...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Social Justice and Civic Engagement in the Classroom
Colleges and universities across the country are increasingly interested in adding opportunities for civic engagement to their curricula, seeking to expose their students to new ways of practicing and researching social justice. Educators from several institutions will look at the ways in which these...
09.24.2011
Activism and the Academy: Maphela Ramphele
In "Forwarding Feminism," her keynote lecture at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, South African academic, activist, and writer Mamphela Ramphele offers an inspiring and thought-provoking vision for the future of feminism and activism. This lecture took place...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Expanding Feminism: Collaborations for Social Justice
BCRW's commitment to bringing feminist scholars and activists together in conversation and collaboration has been at the center of our work for the past 40 years. Representatives from three organizations with whom we have recently partnered - the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Queers for...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Transnational Feminisms Across the Americas
Feminist scholars, activists, and practitioners across the Americas are challenging gendered hierarchies in their communities, nations, and region. Whether or not they explicitly identify as feminists, their work is transforming contemporary politics and cultural relations. Through the stories of Latin American feminist networks, women-led grassroots...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Archives and Activism - The Contemporary Turn
Over the past two decades, the archive has emerged as a central site of feminist knowledge production and activism. Feminist archives and special collections have been able to document activist movements and make previously obscured forms of knowledge visible. This panel brings together a...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Women's Literature and Feminist Learning
Continuing education in the humanities is an extremely important, yet often overlooked subset of higher education. Over the years, BCRW has sought to support continued opportunities for feminist learning through a diverse series of course offerings. Current and past BCRW instructors, along with scholars...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Living and Working in the Borderlands
Gloria Anzaldua's groundbreaking volume Borderlands/La frontera juxtaposes poetry and prose, and research and personal narrative, forming a bridge between activism and scholarship. This panel looks at Anzaldua's work, along with the work of two border poets, Margaret Randall and Ruth Irupe Sanabria, to explore...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Writing, New Media, and Feminist Activism
Writing, blogging, social networking, and other forms of media are vital channels of communication for feminist activists. Panelists Mandy Van Deven (activist and writer), Ileana Jimenez (blogger at FeministTeacher.com), Veronica Pinto (Hollaback!), and Susanna Horng (Girls Write Now) discuss their own media projects and...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: The Multiple Futures of Gender and Sexuality Studies
Women's and gender studies programs have been an integral part of the feminist movement for the past four decades. Over the years, the field has grown and expanded - and so has the proliferation of other disciplines devoted to the study of intersectionality, including...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Sonia Alvarez
In her keynote lecture at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action, Alvarez discusses her latest intellectual and political project, the forthcoming co-edited anthology Translocalities/Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Americas. This lecture took place on the first...
09.23.2011
Activism and the Academy: Opening Remarks by Janet Jakobsen
BCRW Director Janet Jakobsen delivers opening remarks at Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action. This two-day conference was held September 23-24, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.
04.12.2011
Public Feelings Salon with Lauren Berlant
The inaugural event in BCRW's Salon series, this engaged dialogue brings together several prominent and influential scholars whose work explores how affect and emotion influence public life. Just as feminism has sought to identify the ways in which the personal and the political are...
04.06.2011
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster
In this year's Rennert Forum lecture, "Created in God's Image: Intersections of Judaism, Gender, and Human Rights," Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster '01 reflects on her work as a human rights activist, mobilizing the Jewish community on campaigns against US-sponsored torture and modern slavery. Rabbi...
03.28.2011
The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film
During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, a range of iconic female forms emerged to dominate the global pictorial landscape. Female athletes and adventurers, chorine stars, flappers, garconnes, Modern Girls, neue Frauen, suffragettes, and trampky were...
03.09.2011
Domestic Work, Migration and Gender
This forum, organized by DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association and co-sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Barnard Women's Studies, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, engages scholars, policy advocates, activists, and allies about the situation of immigrant women domestic workers with the Philippines...
02.26.2011
The Scholar and Feminist 2011: Simi Linton
Simi Linton delivers opening remarks to the Heidi Latsky Dance Company's Performance of The GIMP Project at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2011, Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability, on February 26. Simi describes dance as the place where disability rights, disability culture and...
02.26.2011
The Scholar and Feminist 2011 Panel Discussion: Aesthetics and Politics in Action
This discussion on Aesthetics and Politics in Action was the morning panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2011 - Movements: Poltics, Performance and Disability. This panel examines cultural, historical and transnational constructions of disability. Making connections between cultural production, performance, aesthetics, activism...
02.01.2011
Carla Freccero
In this lecture, Professor Carla Freccero argues for a queering of temporality that would undo our nationally circumscribed and periodized fields of literary study in order to work through figures that haunt texts across historical eras. Her case study involves cynanthropy, the merger of...
10.21.2010
Christianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality
Focusing specifically on sexuality, the panelists discuss the ways in which transnational and non-governmental Christian organizations have an impact on legal and social policies in different areas where Christians may comprise a small minority or a larger percentage of the population. In addition,...
09.22.2010
Creating Systemic Change at the Intersection of Economic and Reproductive Justice
This panel discussion moderated by Laura Flanders of GRITtv features Sylvia Henriquez (Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health), Lynn Paltrow (Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant Women), and Miriam Yeung (Executive Director, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum). The panel was part of...
03.03.2010
Reproductive Justice in Action
This panel discussion features a group of reproductive justice activists and birth doulas who work across the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and women's health, connecting the traditional reproductive rights movement with new social justice activism that considers the complete physical, political, and economic well-being...
02.27.2010
Joni Seager
Joni Seager delivered the morning keynote address at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, "Feminism and Climate Change." Already among the most vulnerable populations worldwide, women and other marginalized groups have been the most acutely affected by the instabilities produced by climate change....
02.27.2010
The Scholar and Feminist 2010 Panel 1: Economic, Health and Social Justice
Janet Jakbosen introduces Anene Ejikeme who moderates this discussion on Economic, Health and Social Justice, the first panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, "Feminism and Climate Change." Panelists include Nancy Biberman, Laila Iskandar Kamel, Peggy Shepard and Winona LaDuke.
02.27.2010
The Scholar and Feminist 2010 Panel 2: Development and Sustainability
Janet Jakbosen moderates this discussion on Development and Sustainability, the second panel at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2010, "Feminism and Climate Change." Panelists include Rachel Harris, Susan Shaw, Marcela Vasquez-Leon and Eleanor Sterling.
02.16.2010
Alison Donnell
This talk offers a new reading of postcolonial women's writings. The conventional model since the 1980s has been to emphasize issues of silence and invisibility, the desire for voice and narrative space, and self-representation as a form of empowerment and transformation. What is...
12.11.2009
Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power
This conversation, which took place on Grace Paley's birthday, December 11, 2009, explores how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights the everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history...
11.06.2009
Catherine Waldby
Catherine Waldby is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Sydney, Australia. In this lecture, delivered on November 6, 2009 at Barnard College, Professor Waldby explores the emerging tensions between women's voluntary (public good)...
11.05.2009
Saba Mahmood
Introduced by Janet Jakobsen, Saba Mahmood delivered the lecture, "The Politics of Freedom: Geopolitics, Minority Rights and Gender" on October 5, 2009 at Barnard College. Originally titled "Should Feminist Ethics Matter to Religious Politics?" Mahmood's talk marked the sixth annual Helen Pond McIntyre '48...
10.03.2009
Eileen O'Neill
Introduced by Christia Mercer, Eileen O'Neill presented closing remarks, entitled "The History of Women," at "Women, Philosophy and History: A Conference in Celebration of Eileen O'Neill '75." This two-day conference continued the groundbreaking work of Eileen O'Neill by examining the...

What's Barnard Center for Research on Women about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Barnard Center for Research on Women episodes:

Young Feminists Take on Activism and Organizing

Sonia Pierre and the Struggle for Citizenship in the Dominican Republic

Ntozake Shange on Stage and Screen

Janice Haaken

Staking Our Claim: Trans Women's Literature in the 21st Century

Dorothy Roberts

Feminist Knowledge Production in Digital Communities

Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Private Bodies, Public Texts: A Salon in Honor of Karla FC Holloway

The Scholar and Feminist 2012: Theorizing Vulnerability Studies

The Scholar and Feminist 2012: Opening Remarks by Elizabeth Castelli

Marion Nestle

Voices of a Women's Health Movement

What's On Your Plate? The History and Politics of Food

Rebecca Jordan-Young

Activism and the Academy: Building and Rebuilding Societies in Africa

Activism and the Academy: The Feminist Ethnographer's Dilemma

Activism and the Academy: Activist Research - Working in Communities

Activism and the Academy: Campus Activism

Activism and the Academy: Academic / Activist Partnerships in Mexico

Activism and the Academy: Using Knowledge, Advancing Activism

Activism and the Academy: Social Justice and Civic Engagement in the Classroom

Activism and the Academy: Maphela Ramphele

Activism and the Academy: Expanding Feminism: Collaborations for Social Justice

Activism and the Academy: Transnational Feminisms Across the Americas

Activism and the Academy: Archives and Activism - The Contemporary Turn

Activism and the Academy: Women's Literature and Feminist Learning

Activism and the Academy: Living and Working in the Borderlands

Activism and the Academy: Writing, New Media, and Feminist Activism

Activism and the Academy: The Multiple Futures of Gender and Sexuality Studies

Activism and the Academy: Sonia Alvarez

Activism and the Academy: Opening Remarks by Janet Jakobsen

Public Feelings Salon with Lauren Berlant

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster

The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film

Domestic Work, Migration and Gender

The Scholar and Feminist 2011: Simi Linton

The Scholar and Feminist 2011 Panel Discussion: Aesthetics and Politics in Action

Carla Freccero

Christianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality

Creating Systemic Change at the Intersection of Economic and Reproductive Justice

Reproductive Justice in Action

Joni Seager

The Scholar and Feminist 2010 Panel 1: Economic, Health and Social Justice

The Scholar and Feminist 2010 Panel 2: Development and Sustainability

Alison Donnell

Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power

Catherine Waldby

Saba Mahmood

Eileen O'Neill