Join Geographies of Injustice Co-Director for a Book Talk

Anupama Rao, co-director of Geographies of Injustice and former co-director of CSSD working groups Gender & The Global Slum and Reframing Gendered Violence, will be featured in a discussion of the recent publication she edited, Memoirs of a Dalit Communist: The Many Worlds of R.B. More by Satyendra More, and will be joined by Elleni Zelleke and Sudipta Kaviraj. 

To learn more about the book and to RSVP, click here.

To learn more about the Geographies of Injustice working group, read here.

Unpayable Debt Co-director Featured in Podcasts The Takeaway and Hilando Fino

Frances Negron Muntaner, former co-director of the CSSD working group Unpayable Debt, was recently featured on WNYC’s podcast, The Takeaway, and Hilando Fino, a podcast produced by Cadena Radio of Universidad de Puerto Rico. In these episodes, “How West Side Story Culturally Defined the Puerto Rican Diaspora - For Better or for Worse” and “La isla que se vacía [The island that empties],” respectively, Muntaner discusses various aspects of the Puerto Rican diaspora. 

To listen to The Takeaway episode, click here.

To listen to the Hilando Fino episode, click here.

To learn more about the Unpayable Debt working group, click here.

Former CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch’s New Book Featured in Columbia News

Former CSSD Director and project director of Women Mobilizing Memory, Marianne Hirsch, is interviewed about her new book, School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, by Columbia News. She discusses the idea behind the book, her personal connection to the subject matter, the revealing nature of photographs, and her research on memory, amongst other things. 

To read the whole interview, click here.

Environmental Justice Working Group Event Featured in Spectator Article

Center for the Study of Social Difference working group, Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, organized a film screening of Antonio and Piti as a part of Columbia’s Year of Water initiative. Panelist Esther Hamburger described the film as being about “the prejudices this [mixed] couple had to face when they decided to marry, but it’s also about the success of their family… They turned what could be thought of as a problem into something powerful.” Antonio and Piti is co-directed by Brazilian-French filmmaker Vincent Carelli and indigenous filmmaker Wewito Piyãko.

For the full Spectator article, click here.

To learn more about the Environmental Justice working group, click here.

New Blog Post from CSSD Precision Medicine Graduate Fellow

On December 4, 2019, Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture working group hosted a lecture by Shirley Sun, Associate Professor of Sociology with joint courtesy appointments at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and the School of Biological Sciences at NTU. Sun discussed the racialization of precision medicine in her talk, “Should you be worried about racialization of precision medicine? Insights from Asia and North America.” Using comparative analysis of provider perspectives on the categorization of genomics data based on race in Singapore, Canada, and the United States, Sun explained the dilemmas facing physicians as a result of racialized precision medicine.

To learn more about the lecture, read the blog post here.

Environmental Justice Working Group Takes Part in Year of Water Exhibition

The Environmental Justice, Belief Systems and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean working group, in collaboration with the Columbia Music & Arts Library, launched a new exhibition titled “Year of Water: The Amazon and Its Tributaries.” Highly focused, it presents topics related to the Amazon River, including the music of Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia, the Yanomami culture in the work of shaman Davi Kopenawa, the dance of the Lia Rodrigues troupe, the photography of Claudia Andujar, as well as conceptual topics (buen vivir, extractivism, among others). The exhibition was curated by Elizabeth Davis, with additional input and technical assistance from Emily Lavins and Nick Patterson.

The working group has taken part in the Year of Water celebration through its Water, Sound, and Indigenous Film series with two events this year. The film series focuses on indigenous film productions that have engaged with local environmental struggles between indigenous communities and transnational agribusinesses, hydroelectric projects, mining corporations, systematic food injustice, local entanglements in drug wars, and localized armed conflicts. It seeks to highlight the unique, radical aesthetics and sounds we find in these documentaries through the influence of indigenous experience and understanding of sustenance, environment, nature, and conservation.

The exhibition is now on display at the Music & Arts Library, located on the 7th floor Dodge Hall.

To read more about the upcoming Water, Sound, and Indigenous Film series events, click here and here.

CSSD Director Paige West’s Essay Published in Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon

Paige West, CSSD director and former director of the Pacific Climate Circuits working group, published an essay on dispossession in Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon. The volume is “an immediate catalogue of the climate crisis toward ‘pluralizing perception and thereby open up the range of possible action.’”

To access the piece, click here.

To learn more about the Pacific Climate Circuits working group, read here.

Judith Butler Featured in Fragments, Lists, & Lacunae from February 13th to the 15th at New York Live Arts

Former director of CSSD Working Group Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance, Judith Butler, is featured in Fragments, Lists & Lacunae, a multimedia production written and produced by Alexandra Chasin and Zishan Ugurlu. The production focuses on three college students who are taking a course about gaps, holes, blanks, and white space, and in a series of nine lectures, their professor, played by Butler, offers multimedia provocations on absence, silence, negation, and nothingness.

The show will run from February 13th to the 15th at New York Live Arts. 

For more information on the production and ticket purchase, click here.

To read more about Vulnerability and Resistance, click here.

CSSD Anniversary Symposium Speakers featured in The New Yorker

Masha Gessen, a speaker at the 10th anniversary symposium for the Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD), interviews fellow guest speaker and former CSSD working group director, Judith Butler, about her new book The Force of Nonviolence. The piece is featured in The New Yorker and can be read in full here.

For more on Judith Butler’s CSSD working group, Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance: Feminism and Social Change, click here.

Racial Capitalism Co-Director Publishes New Article

Racial Capitalism working group co-director Jordan T. Camp published a new article titled “Counterinsurgency Reexamined: Racism, Capitalism, and US Military Doctrine.” Drawing on archival research, historical geography, and Marxist theory, the article traces US counterinsurgency efforts throughout the last century in examining the role of racism in achieving consent to counterinsurgency wars, and its impact on the endurance of capitalism.

Read the full article here.

Sexual Citizens Featured in Bwog

At the book launch for Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, co-authors, Jennifer Hirsch, professor of sociomedical sciences and former co-director of CSSD working group, Reframing Gendered Violence, and Shamus Khan, professor of sociology, spoke about their inspiration for researching sexual assualt on campus and the conversations surrounding the topic. Bwog, the Columbia student news blog, covered the event.

To read about the full event, click here. 
For more information on the book, click here.

Christina Heatherton to Deliver Lecture at The People’s Forum

Racial Capitalism working group co-director and Assistant Professor of American Studies at Barnard College, Christina Heatherton, will deliver a lecture titled “How to Make a Dress: Domestic Labor, Internationalism, and the Radical Pedagogy of Elizabeth Catlett” at The People’s Forum on February 29, 2020. The lecture will trace Elizabeh Catlett’s life as she developed into a radical feminist, fierce anti-racist, and staunch internationalist.

Read more about her lecture and RSVP here.

Racial Capitalism Co-Director Launches New Show Titled “The New Intellectuals”

Racial Capitalism working group co-director Jordan T. Camp launched a monthly interview show, “The New Intellectuals,” on Youtube. Produced by The People’s Forum, it features interviews with intellectuals invested in the struggles of the poor, working class, and dispossessed in North America and the world.

Check out a full list of available episodes here.

Co-Authors of "Sexual Citizens" Interviewed by NPR

Jennifer Hirsch, professor of sociomedical sciences and former co-director of CSSD working group, Reframing Gendered Violence, and Shamus Khan, professor of sociology, talk about their recent publication, Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, with NPR. In the interview, Hirsch and Khan mention the overwhelming number of students who were open to sharing their personal experiences with sex, assault, and power dynamics. 

Sexual Citizens aims to transform how individuals see and address the widespread problem of sexual assault on college campuses. For more information on the book, click here. 

To read the full interview, click here.

New Blog Post on Menstrual Health Working Group Conference in Switzerland

The Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group fellows Inga Winkler, Chris Bobel, and Nancy Reame hosted the “Menstruation at the Margins” workshop at the Fondation Brocher in Hermance, Switzerland from December 10th-13th, 2019. Research Fellow for the working group and Staff Associate at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Purvaja Kavattur, reflects on her experiences at the workshop in her latest post on the working group’s blog.

Kavattur writes that, focusing on the menstrual health needs of marginalized populations “reminds us that the way we ask questions may not represent the experiences of everyone, especially those at the margins,” and that we should “sharpen [our] commitment to ensure that the menstrual movement does not leave those at the margins behind.”

Read the full blog post here.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner Interviewed by Columbia Magazine

In the winter issue of Columbia Magazine, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Executive Committee member of CSSD and former co-director of working group, Unpayable Debt, talks about the community currency project in Puerto Rico called Valor Y Cambio. The article, “A New Type of Social Currency,” highlights the goals of the project, namely “‘to get people talking about what they value in their communities, about what changes they’d like to see occur, and about how they might contribute to those changes.’”

To read the full article, click here.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner Interviewed on CUNY TV

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Executive Committee member of CSSD and former co-director of working group, Unpayable Debt, discusses Valor Y Cambio, a community currency project in Puerto Rico, with Judith Escalona in last month’s episode of LATiNAS on CUNY TV. The program is a monthly magazine show that interviews Latinx women and their contributions to society. 

To watch the full interview, click here. 

CSSD Call For Proposals 2020

PROJECT GUIDELINES

Call For Proposals

Submission Deadline: Friday, February 28, 2020 by 11:59pm

The Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University (CSSD) is an interdisciplinary research center supporting collaborative projects that address gender, race, sexuality, and other forms of inequality to foster ethical and progressive social change. The Center’s work has two overarching research streams: “Women Creating Change” and “Imagining Justice.” Learn more about these research streams and the projects within them at socialdifference.columbia.edu.

CSSD brings together faculty in humanities, law, social sciences, medicine and the arts, as well as artists and practitioners in the New York area and beyond, to investigate problems of social, economic, and cultural inequality. The Center’s working groups challenge the disciplinary divides among the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences by asking not only how historical categories of social difference intersect on the level of identity, but also how these categories shape institutions, modes of knowing, acts of representation, and processes of globalization. The Center creates the conditions for scholars, artists and practitioners to work collaboratively and internationally on problems of common interest and to set intellectual agendas for the future.

The Center welcomes proposals for new working groups that would begin in Fall 2020 or Fall 2021.
Who is eligible:

• Please note that working groups must include, but are not limited to, Columbia and/or Barnard faculty.

• **Proposals must be submitted by one or more faculty members in one of Columbia's schools and/or Barnard.**

• We will also review working group proposals from graduate students with ABD status who are working in partnership with Columbia and/or Barnard faculty.

• CSSD accepts proposals from all schools of Columbia and Barnard, including but not limited to Arts & Sciences, CUMC, School of the Arts, Columbia Law School, School of Journalism, and GSAPP, with preference given to groups working across schools and/or disciplines.

• Most, but not all, CSSD working groups are led by two or more co-directors. At least one (co-)director must be Columbia or Barnard faculty.

CSSD seeks projects that align with the mission of “Women Creating Change” or “Imagining Justice” and favors proposals from an interdisciplinary core working group (usually 5-8 people, not all of whom need be affiliated with Columbia or Barnard). The Center encourages and facilitates international collaborations. Center support is seed money to enable working groups to get off the ground; it is the expectation of the Center that all projects will also seek additional funding.

New opportunity for one of our funded projects this cycle:

For the 2020 Call for Proposals, CSSD is pleased to announce a special opportunity, funded by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, for a working group in one of the two research streams (Women Creating Change; Imagining Justice) that focuses in some significant way on climate-related issues. All proposals will be reviewed by the CSSD Executive Committee. If you have any questions about this opportunity for climate-related working groups or would like to apply with a relevant working group proposal, please contact CSSD Director Paige West (cw2031@columbia.edu).

Amount of award:
Funding is in the amount of $35,000 over two years with the possibility of $15,000 for a third year, contingent on working group interest and the availability of Center funds.

How CSSD working groups function:
Center projects typically run for three years, but two-year projects will also be considered. Every working group proceeds in accordance to the needs of its particular research interests, but in general many groups tend to proceed as follows:

In three-year projects, year one generally concentrates on focused project development, including the consolidation of a regional and/or international working group, exploratory seminars, and guest lectures or workshops. Year two involves the most intensive intellectual work, featuring regular meetings of the working group and the active participation of fellows and affiliates. Year three is often dedicated to planning and dissemination of the project’s work through a conference, the publication of conference proceedings and/or edited collections of working group scholarship, or online publication of syllabi or other curricular materials.

Please note: CSSD does not function simply as a grant-making institution. Our active working groups create the CSSD community. Funds are administered directly by CSSD staff for the duration of the working group’s involvement with the Center, and it is expected that one (co-)director from each active working group sit on the CSSD Executive Committee. The Center works closely with its active working groups to build additional collaborations and to share additional funding opportunities.

Current and past working group projects include “Geographies of Injustice,” “Menstrual Health and Gender Justice,” “Migrant Personhood and Rights,” “Women Mobilizing Memory,” “Unpayable Debt,” “Pacific Climate Circuits,” "Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture," "Reframing Gendered Violence," “Bandung Humanisms,” “On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics,” “The Future of Disability Studies,” and “Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere.” Please review our website for detailed descriptions of all our projects and for additional information about the Center.

Use of funds:
CSSD project support budgets may be used by project directors at their discretion. However, budgets typically include the following: Course relief for a project director (one course per year for two years, alternating in the case of co-project directors; specific terms to be negotiated by the individual project director with the director’s home department and/or center/institute); stipend for one graduate student assistant responsible for program support; working group meeting lunches and/or breakfasts; limited support for visiting scholars, public conferences and publications. Projects must include at least one public event per year and project directors must be willing to collaborate in the Center’s fundraising efforts. Project directors should be prepared to work with the Center to seek additional funding sources.

How to apply:
Project proposal narratives should not exceed five double-spaced pages and should include a project description and a detailed work plan for group meetings, public events, and the dissemination of project research. Proposal narratives should also describe a plan for soliciting and adjudicating applications for working group membership from the wider University community, as well as any anticipated curricular or pedagogical outcomes of the proposed project.

Please also include, in addition to the above:

• a short CV or bio for each tentative working group member (indicate if participation has been confirmed)

• proposed budget (please use provided budget template)

CSSD Director Paige West and Executive Director Catherine LaSota are available to discuss potential projects with colleagues thinking about proposing them, and sample CSSD project proposals are available by request. We encourage you to contact us in advance of submitting your proposal. Complete proposals should be directed to CSSD Executive Director Catherine LaSota (cl2866@columbia.edu), by Friday, February 28, 2020 at 11:59pm. Projects will be selected by the CSSD Executive Committee. All applicants will be notified by early April 2020.