Barnard Center for Research on Women

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 that can enact structural

change. Panelists include Dior Vargas, Sydnie Mosley '07, and Julie

Zeilinger '15. The discussion also included Jessica Danforth, who is not

included in the recording at her request. Dina Tyson '13 moderated the

panel.

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 of first and

second generation children born on Dominican soil. This panel highlights

the activism of young women who are moving forward with Sonia Pierre's

work on behalf of Dominicans of Haitian descent, and addresses the

question of how international pressure impacts efforts by marginalized

groups to demand recognition. Panelists include Manuela (Solange) Pierre, Sonia Pierre’s oldest

daughter, and the founder and coordinator of the Dominican Network of

Young African Descendants (Red Dominicana de Jóvenes Afrodescendientes);

Ninaj Raoul, the Executive Director of Haitian Women for Haitian

Refugees; Monisha Bajaj, Associate Professor of International and

Comparative Education at Teachers College; Minerva Leticia Solange,

daughter of Sonia Pierre; and Miriam Neptune (moderator), video producer

and director of Birthright Crisis, an award-winning documentary

depicting the cycle of deportation and violence faced by Dominicans of

Haitian descent.

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 the Rainbow is Enuf. Following

the screening of Tyler Perry’s acclaimed 2010 film version of the play,

Ms. Shange speaks candidly with Soyica Diggs Colbert, assistant

professor of English at Dartmouth College, and Monica Miller, associate

professor of English at Barnard, about her groundbreaking work and its

controversial adaptation to the screen.

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 women. Drawing on

several decades of prior field research and documentary film projects,

Professor Haaken presents a study carried out with women refugee and

asylum-seekers in the UK. In discussing photographic images from the

study, Haaken provides a framework for working through a series of

ethical, political, and methodological dilemmas. She draws on

psychoanalytic feminist theory, critical psychology, and participatory

action research methods to argue for the importance of an approach to

the visual that includes the dynamics of spectatorship as well as the

dynamics of the research setting itself as an affectively rich and

conflicted site of knowledge production.

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 of literature, the complex

ways that literary trans narratives will evolve in years to come, and

their own stories of characters navigating relationships, gender,

family, work, race, and more. This panel, co-sponsored by Barnard

Library, Topside Press, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, is

moderated by Reina Gossett.

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 biocitizen in light of the current expansion of

race-based, reproductive, and genetic biotechnologies along with

neoliberal reliance on private resources for people's welfare. Roberts

argues that science, big business, and politics are converging to

support a molecularized understanding of race, health, and citizenship

that ultimately helps to preserve inequities. An internationally

recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate,

Dorothy Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender,

race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming

public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and

bioethics. She is the Penn Integrates Knowledge/George A. Weiss

University Professor, the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell

Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and Professor of Sociology at

University of Pennsylvania.

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 the necessary limitations of identity in digital

networks, these academics and journalists take a fresh look at the

complicated practice of performing feminist labor online. Panelists include

Brittney Cooper, Gail Drakes, Dana Goldstein, Courtney Martin,

and Renina Jarmon in this discussion moderated by Jonathan Beller.

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 changing the

terms of debates over Islam and gender, arguing that the real battle is

between patriarchy and despotism on the one hand, and gender equality

and democracy on the other.

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 book, Private Bodies, Public Texts:

Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics, an important and groundbreaking

work that examines instances where medical issues and information that

would usually be seen as intimate, private matters are forced into the

public sphere, calling for a new cultural bioethics that attends to the

complex histories of race, gender, and class in the US.

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 when

vulnerability becomes the lens through which we examine them, focusing particularly on

relationships of interdependence and structural inequality. Panelists include Martha

Albertson Fineman, Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, Colin Dayan, and Ilaria Vanni. This discussion,

moderated by Elizabeth Castelli, took place at The Scholar and Feminist Conference 2012,

Vulnerability: The Human and the Humanities.