Professor Cinnamon Bloss Speaks with Precision Medicine Working Group

Professor Cinnamon Bloss, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego, gave a talk to the Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture working group on February 15, 2018. In her presentation she focused on the challenges that stem from the rise of technological innovation and the spread of the practice of Precision Medicine. In particular, she examined how the field of bioethics must adapt in terms privacy for patients and how this will affect trust and patient participation. A complete recap of her talk, written by Precision Medicine graduate fellow Moran Levy, can be found here on the blog of the Center for the Study of Social Difference.

Los Angeles Central Library hosts exhibits inspired by the work of Marianne Hirsch

The Los Angeles Central Library is currently hosting two exhibits inspired by the work of CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch, both examining the generational trauma of the Armenian Genocide. The main exhibit, entitled “Nonlinear Histories”, is co-curated by Isin Önol, member of the Working Group for the CSSD Project Women Mobilizing Memory (for which Hirsch served as Co-Director), and features the work of fellow Working Group member Silvina Der Meguerditchian. The exhibit is inspired by Hirsch’s groundbreaking work on postmemory, and is the first exhibit to use postmemory as a framework for examining the Armenian Genocide. In addition to “Nonlinear Histories”, a second exhibit, “Prosperity, Loss, and Survival: A Photographic Journey from the Dildilian Family Archive”, is also being displayed at the library.

As part of the exhibit, Silvina Der Meguerditchian contributed “Treasures”, a work constructed from 130 pages of health remedies composed by the artist’s great-grandmother, a genocide survivor. Der Meguerditchian’s piece aims to provide “a space to reflect and see because lots of second and third generations were silenced by trauma, but our grand kids can now articulate a lot of things”.

In addition to serving as inspiration for the exhibit, Hirsch delivered its opening lecture, entitled “Forty Days and More: Connective Histories.” The exhibit, which opened on March 17, runs through May 6.

CSSD Project Director Jack Halberstam Co-Curates Conference at Stedelijk Museum

Professor Jack Halberstam, director of the CSSD project Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere, recently co-curated a conference and festival at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The conference, titled Hold Me Now - Feel and Touch in an Unreal World, was held from March 21-24 2018, and co-curated by Karen Archey, Rizvana Bradley, and Mark Paterson.

Consisting of four single-day “discursive, and at times perforative” programs, each curated by one of the four curators, the conference aimed to examine the ways in which touch operates in contemporary “technologically mediated, dematerialized digital cultures”, further examining touch “in artistic, philosophical, and political terms to conceive how the haptic is thought and experienced in life, art and design, and theory.”

In addition to serving as a CSSD project director and member of the CSSD Executive Committee, Halberstam is also Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

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."

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.

Jack Halberstam Receives a Columbia-PSL Global Humanities Grant

Jack Halberstam, director of the CSSD working group Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere, has received a Columbia-PSL global humanities grant to organize a transnational conference on sexuality and gender theory. The conference, which will take place at Reid Hall in Paris, will address the need to overcome a singular model of gender through cross-cultural interchange and collaboration. The goal is to start a conversation about setting a new path for queer studies, in which ideas flow between cultures and a global model of sexuality studies is displaced by one characterized by diversity of thought.

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.

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.  

CSSD Project Co-Director Frances Negrón-Muntaner Publishes “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico”

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Co-Director of the CSSD Project Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy, recently published the essay “Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico” in both English and Italian as part of the exhibit “Blackout: Allora & Calzadilla” at the Maxxi Museum in Rome. Negrón-Muntaner’s essay additionally appeared in Politics/Letters.

Negrón-Muntaner’s essay points out that the aftermath of Hurricane Maria “revealed how the United States systematically dispossesses Puerto Rico”, arguing further that “in a world where the powerful routinely enact predatory acts under the brightest of lights, [the blackout following the hurricane] can serve to illuminate the unknown, clarify what has been obscured, ignite revolt, and, like in the theater, end one scene and begin anew.”

In addition to serving as a CSSD Project Co-Director and Executive Committee member, Negrón-Muntaner is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Former Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.  

CSSD Project Co-Director Kevin Fellezs to Give Two Lectures in China

Kevin Fellezs, Co-Director of the CSSD Project Pacific Climate Circuits: Moving beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Economics, will give two upcoming lectures in China, entitled “Fusion, Then…And Now: Thoughts on the Persistence of the Broken Middle”. Fellezs will speak at two eminent musical conservatories in China: the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (widely considered the most prestigious in the country) and the Tianjin Conservatory of Music in Tianjin.

In addition to serving as a CSSD Project Co-Director and Executive Committee member, Fellezs is Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies in the Department of Music, with a joint appointment with the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.