Premilla Nadasen, Co-Director of the Transnational Black Feminisms WG, to Lead Two Events this April on Care

Premilla Nadasen, Co-Director of the Transnational Black Feminisms Working Group, the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College, will be leading to events this April related to the theme of Care.

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April 5-6, 2024: Care, Racial Capitalism, and Social Reproduction, led by Premilla Nadasen (BCRW C0-Director and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History), brings together scholars, organizers, and artists to consider the intersections of social reproduction, racial capitalism, care, the state, and liberatory social change. Social reproduction signifies the labor necessary to maintain and reproduce human life and the labor force. It provides a lens to consider the social relations through which life is made, sustained, and might be transformed. Drawing on the long history of organizing and theorizing forged by feminist activists, low-wage women of color organizers, and scholars who have pushed us to expand our political analysis to include the dimensions of paid and unpaid domestic, emotional, and reproductive labor, this project considers the following questions: What is social reproduction and why does it matter? How does social reproduction broaden the scope of what counts as work and who counts as a worker? How does racial capitalism help us analyze and understand the value of  social reproduction? How is the changing landscape of social reproduction reflective of political and economic shifts? And how is capitalism remaking itself in relation to social reproduction? Building on the work of feminist scholars and activists and the Black Radical Tradition, we also consider how social reproduction can and has been a site of organizing: What are the possibilities and limits of care for labor organizing, disability justice, and abolitionist organizing? How do we understand care in relation to social transformation and the state? Learn more about this event on the BCRW page here.

April 18, 2024: Care: the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Premilla Nadasen (Barnard College) will be joined by Dorothy Roberts (University of Pennsylvania) to discuss her new book, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2023), a powerful critique of capitalist care relations and the economic profit extracted from care. Care traces the rise of the care economy, from its roots in slavery, where there was no clear division between production and social reproduction, to the present care crisis, experienced acutely by more and more Americans. Today’s care economy, Nadasen shows, is an institutionalized, hierarchical system in which some people’s pain translates into other people’s profit. Yet this is also a story of resistance. Low-wage workers, immigrants, and women of color in movements from Wages for Housework and Welfare Rights to the Movement for Black Lives have continued to fight for and practice collective care. These groups help us envision how, given the challenges before us, we can create a caring world as part of a radical future. Learn more about this event on the BCRW page here.

Videos from the the 49th Scholar and Feminist Conference: Anti-Colonialism, Black Radicalism, and Transnational Feminism

On March 22-23, the Transnational Black Feminisms Working Group at CSSD and the Barnard Center for Research on Women co-sponsored the 49th Scholar and Feminist Conference: Anti-Colonialism, Black Radicalism, and Transnational Feminism.

Take some time to watch the videos below.

Many thanks to everyone who joined us, from panelists to audience members, and thanks to everyone involved in organizing and co-sponsoring a truly transformative conference. 

Marxism and Transnational Black Feminist Liberation with Charisse Burden-Stelly, Dayo Gore, and Robyn Spencer-Antoine, moderated by Premilla Nadasen

Black Women and Anti-Colonialism, 1940s-1980s with Lynette Jackson, Laurie Lambert, and Paula Marie Seniors, moderated by Imaobong Umoren 

The Colonial Legacy, Gender, and Economic Empowerment with Yolande Bouka, Jennifer Fish, Natasha Lightfoot, and Keisha-Khan Perry, moderated by Tami Navarro

Intellectual and Activist Interventions in Contemporary Movements, with Layla Brown, Zifeng Liu, and Gabriella Muasya, moderated by Tami Navarro

Tami Navarro, Co-Director of Transnational Black Feminisms, to Speak on Panel at the Duke Centennial

Transnational Black Feminisms Working Group Member Tami Navarro will join fellow speakers in participating in “Sitting at the Kitchen Table Again: A Decade After Fieldnotes from Women of Color in Anthropology,” a panel in the Duke Centennial on February 19, 2024.

More information about the event is forthcoming.

Transnational Black Feminisms | Celia Naylor Publishes New Book “Remembering the Enslaved at Rose Hall Plantation, Jamaica”

Celia Naylor, Professor in the Africana Studies and History departments at Barnard College, published Remembering the Enslaved at Rose Hall Plantation, Jamaica (University of Georgia Press), which examines enslaved people’s experiences at Rose Hall. Naylor also invites readers to explore the project through the interactive website Un)Silencing Slavery.

Transnational Black Feminisms | Tami Navarro Publishes New Book “Virgin Capital”

Tami Navarro, Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies at Drew University, published Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands (SUNY Press), an ethnographic study of the exploitation of the US Virgin Islands as a tax haven and cheap labor resource

CSSD Working Group Director Tami Navarro in Conversation with Columbia faculty and former CSSD working group member about Navarro's recent book

Putting Race to Work:

Neoliberal Development in the US Virgin Islands

Tami Navarro and Natasha Lightfoot will discuss Navarro's book Virgin Capital, which explores racial capitalism and the failures of neoliberal development in the Caribbean and beyond. With their shared intellectual engagement in the region, this conversation will touch on the past, present, and possible futures of islands in the Caribbean.

Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands by Tami Navarro

When: Thursday, 12:15pm–2:00pm EDT on April 27, 2023
Where: The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University

To register for the event see more here [link to webpage of the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities]