Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group fellows publish new article
This piece is the launch of new menstrual health definition and urges action on menstrual health for all.
Fellows of the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group have published the recent article “Menstrual Health: A definition for policy, practice and research.” This paper was developed by a global team of experts who have defined menstrual health to advance policy, practice, and research and is the launch of a new menstrual health definition that urges action on menstrual health for all.
Billions of people around the world experience a menstrual cycle. Meeting their menstrual needs is essential for achieving health and gender equality. A growing body of activists and actors are rising to the challenge and have brought visibility to this long-marginalized topic. However, large-scale investment and coordination across sectors is needed to ensure menstrual health for all. To provide a common language and unite efforts to support the breadth of menstrual needs, a collaboration of experts have now defined menstrual health.
Published in the journal Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, menstrual health is defined as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in relation to the menstrual cycle.” This definition is grounded in the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health and is supplemented by a description of the requirements for achieving menstrual health over the life-course. As outlined in the definition, achieving menstrual health requires access to information about the menstrual cycle and self-care, materials, water and sanitation facilities and services to care for the body during menstruation, access to timely diagnosis, care and treatment for menstrual discomforts and disorders, a positive and respectful environment free from stigma, and the freedom to participate in all spheres of life throughout the menstrual cycle. The definition also emphasizes that whilst the majority of those who experience a menstrual cycle are women and girls, menstrual health is essential for all those who experience a menstrual cycle, regardless of their gender identity and the context in which they live.
Dr. Inga Winkler, one of the authors of the paper and a faculty member in human rights at Columbia University, explained, ” Menstrual health is at a critical junction. While gaining more traction, current efforts risk being siloed and disjointed. A shared understanding of menstrual health will help us address menstrual needs holistically to support the realization of a range of human rights.”
The expert collaboration was brought together by the Global Menstrual Collective and consulted a further 51 stakeholders to refine the definition.
Read the full article here.
Learn more about the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group here and on their blog Periods at Columbia.
Souleymane Bachir Diagne in Christian Science Monitor
Professor Diagne commented on the Nairobi National Museum’s new exhibit highlighting the Kenyan art stolen in the colonial era.
Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne commented on the Nairobi National Museum’s new “Invisible Inventories” exhibit highlighting the European colonial-era theft of Kenyan art. Professor Diagne told Christan Science Monitor: “The movement is snowballing. There’s a public pressure now that wasn’t there before.”
Professor Diagne, a Senegalese philosopher and Columbia professor of Philosophy and French, was a member of CSSD’s working group Bandung Humanisms.
Vanessa Agard-Jones Lectures on Ephemera at Wesleyan University
In “Empirical Ephemera,” Professor Agard-Jones used the concept-metaphor of sand to consider how coloniality is made material.
Assistant Professor Vanessa Agard-Jones gave a lecture on “Empirical Ephemera” at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Humanities. She explored the ways that colonality is made material, and how we might use sand as a tool for thinking an ephemeral archive, empirically.
Agard-Jones is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia, co-director of CSSD’s Black Atlantic Ecologies working group, and member of the Queer Aqui and former Reframing Gendered Violence and Science and Social Difference working groups.
Meredith Gamer Lectures at Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Assistant Professor Gamer’s two online lectures focused on the works of artist William Hogarth.
Assistant Professor Meredith Gamer participated in this year’s Yale University Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Artist in Focus Public Lecture Series. Professor Gamer’s lectures focused on two works by etching artist William Hogarth: Industry and Idleness (1747) and The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751). Assistant Professor of Art History, Gamer is a member of CSSD’s Motherhood and Technology working group.
Watch the full lectures here.
Elections to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Congratulations to Professors Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Mabel O. Wilson on joining the Academy.
Congratulations to University Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Associate Professor Mabel O. Wilson on their election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Spivak is University Professor and Founder of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia, and former co-director of CSSD working group The Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, Statistics and Stories.
Wilson is Associate Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia, and a member of former CSSD working groups Engendering the Archive and Reframing Gendered Violence.
Lila Abu-Lughod Delivered A Webinar On Gender Violence
This webinar was part of a virtual event series entitled Theory From The Margins
Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, Reframing Gendered Violence working group fellow, delivered a webinar on "Gender from the Margins: The Geopolitics of Gender Violence" as part of a series hosted by the Theory from the Margins project. Professor Abu-Lughod spoke on her work, including the forthcoming collection The Cunning of Gender Violence.
Check out the Webinar Here.
Office of the Provost Mid-Career Faculty Grant
Congratulations to Spring 2021 Grant awardees Kevin Fellezs (Music), Natasha Lightfoot (History), and Camille Robcis (French, History).
We are pleased to congratulate CSSD working group members Kevin Fellezs, Natasha Lightfoot and Camille Robcis on receiving a Spring 2021 Columbia Office of the Provost Mid-Career Faculty Grant in recognition of significant contributions to their fields.
Kevin Fellezs received the grant for his work on The Love Song in Black Popular Music, 1945-2000. He is Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology & African American & African Diaspora Studies and former co-director of CSSD’s Pacific Climate Circuits: Moving Beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Economics working group.
Assistant Professor Natasha Lightfoot received the grant for work on her project, Fugitive Cosmopolitans and the Making of the Black Atlantic. She teaches Caribbean, Atlantic World, and African Diaspora History, and was a member of CSSD’s former Digital Black Atlantic working group.
Associate Professor Camille Robcis received the grant for her forthcoming project, tentatively titled The Gender Question: Populism, National Reproduction, and the Crisis of Representation, in which she explores the protests against the so-called “theory of gender” and their conceptual links to populism. She teaches modern European intellectual history, and is a member of CSSD working group Queer Aqui.
New Social Engagement Projects at the Center for the Study of Social Difference
These new groups will build on established CSSD projects in alignment with Columbia University's Fourth Purpose.
The Center for the Study of Social Difference is proud to announce the inaugural recipients of CSSD’s Social Engagement Grants, The Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Repair and Reconstructing History in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro and Dharavi, Mumbai. Each of these new projects are lead by current and former CSSD working directors and to build on the work of CSSD groups, moving that work toward new forms of public engagement and partnerships, in alignment with Columbia University's Fourth Purpose. To learn more about each of these projects visit their project pages linked above.
Saidiya Hartman Receives PEN America Literary Award
Professor Hartman was announced as one of the 2021 Award Winners for her recent book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals.
Saidiya Hartman Receives PEN America Literary Award
We are pleased to congratulate Saidiya Hartman, former co-director of the Gender & the Global Slum and Engendering the Archive working groups, on receiving a PEN America Literary Award for her recent book. Professor Hartman was a recipient of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for her book entitled Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals.
Read more about her book and this special distinction here.
Kevin Fellezs in The Guardian
Professor Fellezs commented on protest songs and “freedom musics” in this polarized time
Informed by his work on the intersections of music and collective liberation, Professor Kevin Fellezs commented on “freedom musics” in The Guardian’s article on rightwing co-optations of protest songs.
Kevin Fellezs is Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology & African American & African Diaspora Studies and former co-director of CSSD’s Pacific Climate Circuits: Moving Beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Economics working group.
CSSD Faculty Recipients of Guggenheim Fellowship
We are excited to announce that Paige West, CSSD Director, and Farah Griffin, former co-director of a Women Creating Change working group, have been named 2021 Fellows for their extraordinary and productive scholarship.
CSSD Faculty Recipients of Guggenheim Fellowship
The Center for the Study of Social Difference proudly congratulates Paige West, Director of CSSD, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, co-director of past Women Creating Change working group Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. This follows up Paige's honor just earlier this year as one of 50 Explorers Changing the World.
We are fortunate to have the leadership of these incredible scholars at our Center. Our faculty are doing outstanding work, and it is wonderful to see them receive these well-deserved honors.
Congratulations Paige and Farah!
The full list of 2021 Guggenheim Fellows can be found here.