Co-Director of the Gender & the Global Slum Working Group Has Been Named University Professor
Professor Saidiya Hartman has been given Columbia University’s highest academic honor.
Congratulations to Saidiya Hartman, former co-director of the Gender & the Global Slum and Engendering the Archive working groups, who has been named University Professor, Columbia’s highest academic honor. President Bollinger, announcing her new title, wrote: "She brings a painstaking and unrelenting focus to retrieving and telling the lost stories of the dispossessed. Deploying the singularly powerful tool of her own invention - 'critical fabulation' - Saidiya weaves together a semi-nonfictional narrative from bits and shreds of historical data in order to give voice to those whose place in history has all too often been unfairly set aside."
Professor Hartman has previously been the winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and has been a Fulbright, Rockefeller, Whitney Oates, and University of California President's Fellow. Her most recent book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, was awarded a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Co-Director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women Working Group Has Been Presented with a Society of Columbia Graduates 2020 Great Teacher Award
Farah Griffin, the Director of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, was given the Great Teacher Award.
The co-director of the Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women working group, Farah Griffin has been presented with a Society of Columbia Graduates 2020 Great Teacher Award. Established in 1949, this award is given annually to honor a professor's ability to challenge and inspire undergraduates and to relate positively to students outside the classroom, as well as to recognize the faculty member's standing in their own academic discipline.
Women Mobilizing Memory Collective Solidarity Statement on Artsakh
As scholars, artists and activists who are part of the transnational feminist Women Mobilizing Memory Collective sponsored by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, we have studied the memories of violent histories in the interests of promoting peace, social justice, and a democratic future across the globe.
Today, we call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Nagorno- Karabagh.
As scholars, artists and activists who are part of the transnational feminist Women Mobilizing Memory Collective sponsored by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, we have studied the memories of violent histories in the interests of promoting peace, social justice, and a democratic future across the globe.
Today, we call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Nagorno- Karabagh.
On September 27, 2020, with the backing of the Turkish government (1) and the mobilization of Syrian mercenaries (2), Azerbaijan launched a military assault on Nagorno-Karabagh, an Armenian enclave known to its residents as Artsakh. The cease fire agreement of October 10 was immediately violated.
The decades-long political conflict over the status of this enclave has erupted again as a violent and destabilizing force that is visiting death and destruction on the people of the region at a moment when the world is reeling from the effects of a deadly pandemic. Critical resources that should be used to respond to people’s medical and economic needs have been diverted into war. What is more, Armenians in Turkey and the Diaspora have been made targets of hate crimes and hate speech.
Wars do not result only in death, displacement, injury and destruction, but they create deep wounds that are transmitted across generations. This region already has a long and painful history of such wounds. As part of our research and collaboration, we have learned a great deal from many individuals and institutions in the Caucasus who have been working diligently, creatively and collaboratively to heal these wounds and to cultivate a peaceful future. We would like to join our voices with the courageous voices of peace from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey who are calling for immediate ceasefire, a permanent cessation of aggression and a peaceful resolution to this conflict that will afford the people of Nagorno-Karabagh the right to determine their own future. (3-7)
It is our hope that rather than spreading into an ever more violent proxy war, this conflict can be brought to an immediate end. We call on the international community, including the governments of the United States, Russia, and Turkey, to work to end the violence immediately and to bring about a lasting settlement. A lasting settlement needs to end all human rights violations in the region and to give voice to women and other marginalized groups through the implementation of the UN Resolution 1325. (8)
1. What lies behind Turkish support for Azerbaijan
2. Syrians Make Up Turkey’s Proxy Army in Nagorno-Karabakh
3. CaucasusTalks
4. To stand for peace, in spite of everything
5. HDP MP Garo Paylan: There are no winners in war and no losers in peace
6. #PEACENOW #BARIŞİSTİYORUZ
7. Armenian, Azeri Youth Speak Out For Peace
8. What’s Really Driving the Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict
The Women Mobilizing Memory Collective at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, comprised of over 40 scholars, artists and activists from the United States, Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Germany, and Austria.
Co-Director of the Black Atlantic Ecologies Working Group Interviewed by Wave Hill
Professor Jones spoke with Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin and Eileen Jeng Lynch and was part of an online Q&A event.
Vanessa Agard Jones, co-director of Black Atlantic Ecologies, spoke with Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin and Eileen Jeng Lynch at Wave Hill about a variety of topics including queer ecologies, fugitivity, toxicity, and decoloniality. Professor Jones reflected on Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin’s Sunroom Project Space exhibition M for Membrane, which explores the membrane, mystery, and magic of microbial forms, fungi, and indigenous mold.
Co-Director of Geographies of Injustice to Speak at Institute of Latin American Studies Online Event
Ana Paulina Lee is moderating “Liberating the Sacred: Afro-Brazilian Religions, Cultural Heritage, and the Law” on November 5th.
Professor Ana Paulina Lee, co-director of the Geographies of Injustice: Gender and the City working group, will be moderating a conversation with Nilce Naira Nascimento and Sergio Suiama on November 5 from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM. Liberating the Sacred: Afro-Brazilian Religions, Cultural Heritage, and the Law is hosted by the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. Between 1889-1945, over 500 sacred objects were confiscated from Candomblé and Umbanda temples in Rio de Janeiro. For more than a century, the sacred objects were held at the building that once served as headquarters to the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), once the center for police administration, a prison, and a torture site, and now the headquarters for the Civil Police. In September 2020, after decades of struggle, the objects were transferred to the Museum of the Republic. This conversation revisits the history to liberate the sacred objects. Participants will discuss plans for the future of these sacred objects and address issues related to cultural belonging, law, appropriation, and heritage.
Unpayable Debt Working Group Co-director Profiled by Feminist Films in the Classroom
The journal’s dossier focuses on Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner's teaching and research told largely through the words of several generations of former students.
The Feminist Films in the Classroom’s piece, We Learn Together: A Conversation about Feminist Film Pedagogy with Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Elisabetta Diorio, is a biographical interview about Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner's life, teachings, and films. Professor Negrón-Muntaner, CSSD Executive Committee member and co-director of the Unpayable Debt working group, talks about some of her films such as AIDS in the Barrio (1989) and Brincando el Charco (1994). The piece also includes interviews with former students who have followed in her footsteps and relfect the impact of Professor Negrón-Muntaner’s work.
Transnational Black Feminisms Co-Director Featured in New Documentary
Premilla Nadasen was interviewed along with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the history of women’s rights and suffrage in the United States of America.
Premilla Nadasen, co-director of the Transnational Black Feminisms working group, was interviewed along with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the history of women’s rights and suffrage in the United States of America. The Nineteenth Amendment: A Woman’s Right to Vote was produced by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The film is about women’s long, difficult struggle to win the right to vote. It’s about citizenship, the power of the vote, and why women had to change the Constitution with the 19th Amendment to get the vote.
Co-Director of the Queer Aqui Working Group interview by BBC Worldwide
Jack Halberstam spoke with BBC about the groundbreaking Hite Report, after the death of its author, Shere Hite.
The co-director of the Queer Aqui working group, Jack Halberstam, spoke with BBC Worldwide about the groundbreaking Hite Report, after the death of its author, Shere Hite. Shere Hite was a prominent feminist whose famous book, “The Hite Report: Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality" gave scientific credibility to the claims that women, especially white heterosexual women, were making about deep dissatisfaction with their domestic lives and heterosexual marriage. The book led to many discussions about the unequal relationship between women and men with regard to pleasure in a heteronormative dynamic and was an important part of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Former Co-Director of Pacific Climate Circuits Interviewed by El Fénix
Professor Kevin Fellezs discussed recent protests against police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
Professor Kevin Fellez, director of Studies on the Diaspora of Afro-Americans and Africans at Columbia University and co-director of former Center for the Study of Social Difference workin group, Pacific Climate Circuits , spoke with the Chilean newspaper, El Fénix in a piece titled, "I Can't Breathe": Accounts of Anti-racist Protests in the United States about systemic racism, police brutality, and the mainstream rhetoric that is used to justify police brutality.
Environmental Justice Working Group Co-Director Quoted in the Financial Times
Professor Vicky Murrillo discussed recent developments in Argentinian politics.
Victoria Murrillo, Environmental Justice working group co-director, was quoted in the Financial Times article, Argentina’s political double act moves on to the next challenge by Benedict Mander. The article was discussed Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández and current Vice President/ Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and their struggle to manage the Argentine debt, recession, inflation and negotiations with the IMF.
Director of The Future of Disability Studies, Working Group Discusses Teaching in the Age of COVID
The Columbia News interviews Professor Rachel Adams about the relevance of her course, “Comics, Health, and Embodiment”.
Former director of the Future of Disability Studies, and the Precision Medicine: Ethics Politics and Culture working groups, Rachel Adams discusses her course “Comics, Health, and Embodiment” and its new relevance in the age of COVID, with Columbia News. The class looks at graphic narratives with a focus on embodied identities such as gender, sexuality, race, and age with recent additions of more comics by people of color in response to the BLM movement and graphic narratives that deal with experiences of health, illness, and disability in light of the current pandemic.
Queer Aqui Working Group Fellow was interviewed by major News Outlets About Recent Changes to the Supreme Court
Professor of Law, Gender and Sexuality Studies Katherine Franke discussed the implications of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
Queer Aqui working group fellow and Professor of Law, Gender and Sexuality, Studies Katherine Franke has been interviewed widely about the U.S. Supreme Court, the tragic death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barret. Professor Franke has appeared in pieces for PIX 11, CNBC, Bloomberg, The New Republic, the Christian Science Monitor, and the AP.
Motherhood and Technology Co-Director Interviewed by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes
Rishi Goyal discussed his experience working in emergency medicine during the pandemic and about critical initiatives that the humanities bring to creating better healthcare.
In a piece titled, Humanities in the Emergency Room, Rishi Goyal, Columbia University Medical Center emergency department physician and co-director of the Motherhood and Technology working group, was interviewed by Jason Rozumalski of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) about the importance of humanities in medical science and an interdisciplinary approach to health.