CSSD Collaboration with Columbia Global Center in Istanbul 2018-2019
CSSD projects and affiliates were featured in the Center’s most recent Annual Report.
The Columbia Global Center in Istanbul’s 2018-2019 Annual Report features project and affiliates of the Center for the Study of Social Difference. The Reframing Gendered Violence working group held four workshops in 2018 as a part of their workshop series hosted by the Istanbul Global Center. These workshops aimed to open up a critical global conversation among scholars and practicioners in order to reframe the issue of violence against women as it is currently discussed in a wide range of fields, both academic and policy-oriented. This series included “Beyond Prevalence: The Next Genderation of Campus Sexual Assault” on February 9th, “Institutionaled Violence and Gender: Innocence-Disposability-Resilience” on March 9th, “Interrogating Culture-Based Explanantions for Violence Against Women” on March 23rd, and “Turkish Students Present on Reframing Gendered Violence” on June 7th.
On September 25th, Women Mobilizing Memory (WMM) fellow and speaker at CSSD’s 10th Anniversary Symposium, Ayşe Gül Altınay, CSSD Executive Committee member and WMM co-director, Jean Howard, and director of the Queer Theory working group, Jack Halberstam, gave a talk entitled “Bridging Academia and Activism Thorugh Gender Studes.” The talk presented a critical reflection of the possibilities of doing feminism and gender studies in contemporary Turkey, with specific examples from the experiences of Sabancı University Gender and Women’s Studies Center of Excellence.
Former CSSD director and co-director of the WMM working group, Marianne Hirsch, delivered a talk entitled “Women Carrying Memory: Stateless Figures,” along with Women Mobilizing Memory co-editor Ayşe Gül Altınay and Aylin Vartanyan. This talk looked at two recent memorial projects by feminist diasporic artists Mirta Kupferminc and Wangechi Muthu, which explored the vicissitudes and vulnerabilities of exile and statelessness, and suggested that stateless memory can open up the possibility of imagining alternative relationships between contemporary subjects and citizenship, national belonging, and home, as well as alternate temporalities of becoming.
The annual report also features a photo from a WMM Memory Walk conducted in Turkey. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, joined WWM fellow, Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, and Global Center Director and CSSD Women Creating Change Leadership Council member, Safwan Masri, for this insightful tour of Istanbul.
To view the entire 2018-2019 Annual Report from Columbia’s Global Center in Istanbul click here.
Jean Howard and Ana Paulina Lee to be Featured on Panel “A Celebration of Soft Power”
The discussion will revolve around American democracy, race, performance, and US-China relations.
CSSD Executive Committee member and former Women Mobilizing Memory co-director, Jean Howard, and co-director of the Geographies of Injustice working group, Ana Paulina Lee will be featured on the upcoming panel “A Celebration of Soft Power.” Fellow panelists will include David Henry Hwang and Denise Cruz and will address American democracy, race, performance, and US-China relations, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. The event will take place on December 3rd from 4 pm to 6 pm in Kent Hall and is free of charge.
To read more about the event, click here.
Paige West Leads Essay Series Ruminating the Future of Anthropology
The essay series is entitled "From Reciprocity to Relationality: Anthropological Possibilities."
Paige West, CSSD Director and former co-director of the Pacific Climate Circuits and Reframing Gendered Violence working groups, led the publication of an essay series that brought together sixteen anthropologists to discuss the possible futures of the field of anthropology. Published on the Society for Cultural Anthropology, the essay series focused on analyzing the power dynamics of racism, elitism, sexism, and violence within the field historically and continuing into the present.
Read more about the essay series here, and her introduction here.
Lila Abu-Lughod Gives B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture
The lecture, entitled “Gender, Violence, Security,” took place on November 1.
This past week Lila Abu-Lughod delivered the twenty-first B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture, a series instituted in memory of economist Professor B.N. Ganguli. The lecture, entitled “Gender, Violence, Security,” took place at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi.
Lila Abu-Lughod is co-director of Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence, and of Reframing Gendered Violence. She is also a member of CSSD’s current Executive Committee.
Read more about her recent lecture here.
CSSD Welcomes Paige West as Director
Co-director of Reframing Gendered Violence and Pacific Climate Circuits working groups appointed as Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference
Paige West, Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, begins her directorship of the Center for the Study of Social Difference this summer after having served as co-director of two CSSD working groups, Reframing Gendered Violence and Pacific Climate Circuits.
“I’m honored to have been selected to direct CSSD for the next few years,” says Dr. West. “The center’s goal of creating space for our community to come together to work towards scholarship that pushes our understanding of social difference in new directions and that produces social change lies at the heart of why I initially became a scholar.”
Dr. West’s broad scholarly interest is the relationship between societies and their environments. More specifically, she has written about the linkages between environmental conservation and international development, the material and symbolic ways in which the natural world is understood and produced, the aesthetics and poetics of human social relations with nature, and the creation of commodities and practices of consumption.
In addition to her academic work, Dr. West is the co-founder, and a board member, of the PNG Institute of Biological Research, a small NGO dedicated to building academic opportunities for research in Papua New Guinea by Papua New Guineans. Dr. West is also the co-founder of the Roviana Solwara Skul, a school in Papua New Guinea dedicated to teaching at the nexus of indigenous knowledge and western scientific knowledge.
“Reframing Gender Violence Globally” Students Complete Course with Presentations
Professor Lila Abu-Lughod’s course that came out of working group Reframing Gendered Violence came to an end this week.
CSSD working group Reframing Gendered Violence launched a course entitled, “Reframing Gender Violence Globally,” in the spring 2019 semester. It was taught by Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science Lila Abu-Lughod, co-director of the Reframing Gendered Violence working group. The course came to an end this week with student presentations.
The full course description can be read here.
Anupama Rao Delivers Franke Lecture at Yale
Co-Director of CSSD working group Geographies of Injustice, gave a talk entitled “Social Abstraction, Historical Comparison: Thinking Caste, Race, and Gender in the Time Capital.”
Anupama Rao, Associate Professor of History at Barnard and co-director of CSSD working groups Geographies of Injustice and Reframing Gendered Violence, delivered a talk entitled “Social Abstraction, Historical Comparison: Thinking Caste, Race, and Gender in the Time Capital” at Yale University. It was part of the Franke Lecture Series.
Anupama’s work explores the relationship of caste and political culture. Her book The Caste Question theorized caste subalternity, with specific focus on the role of anti-caste thought (and its thinkers) in producing alternative genealogies of political subject-formation.
You can read more about the lecture and her work here.
Reframing Gendered Violence Working Group Hosts Public Workshop on Transgender Violence
The two-day Reframing Transgender Violence workshop featured scholars, activists, attorneys, and graduate students working across issues of transgender violence and justice.
Held on Thursday, January 24th and Friday, January 25th, and organized by Reframing Gendered Violence working group co-director Professor Kendall Thomas, the Reframing Transgender Violence workshop served as space for presenters to share their various work on the topic and interact with audience members through discussion. Speakers at the workshop included Catherine Clune-Taylor, Asli Zengin, Chinyere Ezie, Chase Strangio, Sergio Suiama, Joss Taylor Greene, C. Riley Snorton and Christina B. Hanhardt.
For a recap of the workshop visit our blog.
A full-length video of the workshop will be made available to the public in the hope of continuing the conversation.
Jennifer Hirsch Featured in Teen Vogue
Reframing Gendered Violence co-director Jennifer Hirsch featured in an article in Teen Vogue discussing study on sexual education and its impact on how some college students practice consent.
A study by Reframing Gendered Violence co-director Jennifer Hirsch exploring the difference between how many straight, cisgender students are taught to give and get consent through a college-mandated "Yes Means Yes" training course is featured in an article on Teen Vogue.
The study titled “Social Dimensions of Sexual Consent Among Cisgender Heterosexual College Students: Insights From Ethnographic Research” reveals a social gray area — one in which young people are having consensual sex, but don't necessarily practice it in the way they were taught.
Click here to read the article.
Click here to read the study by Hirsch and her co-authors.
Jean Howard Delivers the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University
CSSD project director Jean Howard gave the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University on "Edward Bond's Bingo: Shakespeare Revisited."
CSSD project director Jean Howard gave the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University on "Edward Bond's Bingo: Shakespeare Revisited."
Professor Howard also led a seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America in Los Angeles on "Shakespeare and Marx Now."
Jean Howard is a renowned Shakespeare scholar and has written many books and essays on early modern literature, Shakespeare, feminist studies, and theater history. She is a co-director for the CSSD projects Engendering the Archive, Women Mobilizing Memory, and Reframing Gendered Violence.
The Dean Family Speaker Series is hosted by The Department of English at Wake Forest University and brings nationally and internationally-recognized scholars to campus. It encourages critical conversations and dialogue related to the study of English.
Lila Abu-Lughod Delivers Geertz Commemorative Lecture at Princeton University
Lila Abu-Lughod, former director of CSSD and co-director of CSSD projects Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies, Reframing Gendered Violence, and Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, delivered the Clifford Geertz Commemorative Lecture at Princeton University on February 22, 2018.
Lila Abu-Lughod, former director of CSSD and co-director of CSSD projects Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies, Reframing Gendered Violence, and Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, delivered the Clifford Geertz Commemorative Lecture at Princeton University on February 22, 2018.
Abu-Lughod’s lecture, “Settler Colonialism Observed: Palestine's Alter-natives”, examined “Palestine’s apparent political impasses” in light of “the current ferment in critical indigenous and native studies about settler colonialism in places like Australia and North America.” Considering “questions about how to judge the efflorescence of recent Palestinian cultural projects like the new Palestinian Museum”, Abu-Lughod argues that the concept of settler colonialism, “however contested and even problematic”, remains a potent force that can “generate comparisons and solidarities that burst open exhausted political imaginations and bring together the political, material, and moral.”
In addition to serving as director, project co-director, and executive committee member at CSSD, Abu-Lughod is Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, a former director and current executive committee member of the Columbia Institute for Research on Women, Gender, & Sexuality, and former director of the Columbia Middle East Institute.
Essay Conceived in IRWGS seminar inspired by CSSD Project is Published in the New York Times Modern Love Column
Columbia University senior Bindu Bansinath wrote the first version of the newest Modern Love essay in the IRWGS undergraduate seminar Narrating Rape, taught by CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch.
Columbia University senior Bindu Bansinath wrote the first version of the newest Modern Love essay in the IRWGS undergraduate seminar Narrating Rape, taught by CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch.
Bansinath's essay “How ‘Lolita’ Freed Me From My Own Humbert” has been published today online and will be in this Sunday's print version of the New York Times as part of their popular Modern Love essay series. Her essay tells the story of a young woman’s struggle with abuse and her journey to reclaim her voice.
The Narrating Rape course is one of the outcomes of the Reframing Gendered Violence project at CSSD, part of the Women Creating Change initiative.
New Yorker article about the work of Jennifer Hirsch on the SHIFT project at Columbia
The work of Jennifer Hirsch, co-director of the CSSD project Reframing Gendered Violence, is featured in an article by New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino. This work was discussed at the October 5, 2017 CSSD event Beyond Prevalence.
Jia Tolentino has published an article entitled "Safer Spaces" in the February 12 & 19, 2018 print issue of New Yorker magazine. In this article, Tolentino highlights the work of Jennifer Hirsch, co-director of CSSD project Reframing Gendered Violence (RGV), on the SHIFT program at Columbia. SHIFT is a comprehensive research project that examines the many factors that shape sexual health and sexual violence for undergrads at Columbia.
You can read the full New Yorker article online here.
In October 2017, Professor Hirsch convened a panel discussion called Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault, as part of the RGV project at CSSD. A video of that event can be found on the CSSD YouTube channel here.
Video Available from RGV Event “Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault”
Video from "Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault," part of the CSSD project Reframing Gendered Violence, is now available on the CSSD YouTube channel.
On October 5, 2017, leading researchers from across the country presented at the panel, “Beyond Prevalence: The Next Generation of Research on Campus Sexual Assault.” Organized and moderated by Jennifer S. Hirsch, co-Principal Investigator of Columbia’s ground-breaking Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation, the panelists presented new and emerging work on environmental drivers of campus sexual assault, and discussed the institutional challenges of conducting research on campus sexual violence at universities seeking to comply with Title IX guidance.
The October 5 forum was part of the CSSD Reframing Gendered Violence series of panels and seminars applying critical perspectives from the social sciences and humanities to gender violence. Reframing Gendered Violence is a two-year-long project of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference and is supported by a grant from the University’s Dean of Humanities.
Video is available here.
Anupama Rao publishes Gender, Caste and the Imagination of Equality
CSSD project co-director Anupama Rao has published the edited volume Gender, Caste, and the Imagination of Equality.
CSSD project co-director Anupama Rao has published the edited volume Gender, Caste, and the Imagination of Equality. This volume, published by Women Unlimited, features essays that examine the relationship between gender, caste, class, and political agency in the context of ongoing, rapid social transformation in contemporary India.
Anupama Rao is a current member of the Center for the Study of Social Difference Executive Committee, as well as co-director of CSSD projects Reframing Gendered Violence and Gender & the Global Slum. Rao is associate professor of History at Barnard College, and Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University.
Video now available for "Gender and the Technologies of State Violence" panel
Watch presentations from Sherene Razack, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Miriam Ticktin. Part of the Reframing Gendered Violence project at CSSD.
On November 16, 2017, as part of its Reframing Gendered Violence working group, the Center for the Study of Social Difference presented "Gender and the Technologies of State Violence" in Case Lounge at Columbia Law School, with support from the Dean of Humanities and the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University.
You can now watch a video of this panel, featuring Sherene Razack (Department of Gender Studies, UCLA), Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (Law School, Hebrew University; International Visitor, Columbia Law School), and Miriam Ticktin (Department of Anthropology, New School University) and moderated by Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia University) on the CSSD YouTube channel here.
Lila Abu-Lughod joins amicus brief against the Executive Order on the "Muslim Ban"
CSSD project director Lila Abu-Lughod joined several scholars in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in the case by Muslim Advocates against the Executive Order on the "Muslim Ban."
Lila Abu-Lughod, a director of the CSSD projects Reframing Gendered Violence and Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, joined several scholars in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in the case by Muslim Advocates against the Executive Order on the "Muslim Ban."
Her research in Do Muslim Women Need Saving? supported the argument that invoking "honor killings" in the Executive Order indicates animus toward one religious group.