CSSD Director Writes Afterword for Ethnos’s Journal of Anthropology
Paige West’s piece is entitled Translations, Palimpsests, and Politics: Environmental Anthropology Now.
Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD) director and former co-director of CSSD Reframing Gendered Violence and Pacific Climate Circuits working groups, Paige West, writes an afterword for Ethnos’s publication, Translations, Palimpsests, and Politics: Environmental Anthropology Now. Paige says that the issue discusses “environmental anthropology and how we write and think against attempts at universal wordings.”
To read the issue, click here.
Women Mobilizing Memory Working Group Fellow Pens Article
Nancy Kricorian publishes report read at Women Mobilizing Memory book event.
Nancy Kricorian, Center for the Study of Social Differences (CSSD) working group Women Mobilizing Memory (WMM) fellow, published a piece on The Armenian Weekly, The Name of this Place, which was read at the WMM event, Reclaiming Collective Memories in Contemporary Turkey. Her piece discusses the historical context of the occupation of Dikranagerd and her experience touring the destroyed Sur District.
For the full article, read here.
Vicky Murillo Interviews Historian Nara Milanich for Unpacking Latin America Podcast
This is the third episode of the monthly podcast, released on December 9.
Vicky Murillo, professor of Political Science and International Affairs and director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference’s (CSSD) working group Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, interviews professor and historian, Nara Milanich. Milanich talks about the shift from cultural to biological definitions of paternity thanks to DNA testing and how such testing could either be used to recover kids stolen by military dictatorships or to halt migration at the US-Mexico border. She also explains age-based violence suffered by migrant children in Central America, amongst other things.
The interview can be found on the podcast Unpacking Latin America, hosted by Vicky Murillo, discussing major themes around Latin American history, culture, and politics.
Find the full podcast interview here.
For more on the Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean working group visit their project page.
Vicky Murillo is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University. Her work focuses on distributive politics, electoral behavior, institutional weakness, Latin American politics, agricultural and conservation policies.
Nara Milanich is a professor of History at Barnard College. Her scholarly interests include modern Latin America, Chile, and the comparative histories of family, gender, childhood, reproduction, law, and social inequality. Professor Milanich teaches courses ranging from the Modern Latin American History survey to a comparative seminar on the Global Politics of Reproduction.
Vicky Murillo Interviews Journalist Daniel Alarcon for Unpacking Latin America Podcast
This is the second episode of the monthly podcast, released on November 11.
Vicky Murillo, professor of Political Science and International Affairs and director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference’s (CSSD) working group Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, interviews professor and journalist, Daniel Alarcón. Alarcon shares stories about his Spanish radio program and the type of Latin American stories he's working on and more in this episode.
The interview can be found on the podcast Unpacking Latin America, hosted by Vicky Murillo, discussing major themes around Latin American history, culture, and politics.
Find the full podcast interview here.
For more on the Environmental Justice, Belief Systems, and Aesthetic Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean working group visit their project page.
Vicky Murillo is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University. Her work focuses on distributive politics, electoral behavior, institutional weakness, Latin American politics, agricultural and conservation policies.
Daniel Alarcon is a professor of Broadcast Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the creator of RADIO AMBULANTE, an award-winning Spanish-language podcast on NPR. He has also written for Harpers, The New York Magazine,The New Yorker and Etiqueta Negra and published two novels: Lost City Radio and At Night We Walk in Circles.
On the Frontlines Working Group Coordinator Highlighted by the School of General Studies
The profile on Jeremy Orloff discusses the group’s trip to West Africa, centered around their efforts to retrieve oral histories from local nurses and midwives active during the Ebola crisis.
Jeremy Orloff, post baccalaureate student in Columbia’s School of General Studies (GS) and Coordinator for the Center for the Study of Social Difference’s (CSSD) On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics working group, was recently profiled by GS. The profile highlights Jeremy’s nontraditional academic background and what inspired his pursuit of a career in medicine. Jeremy’s visit to Liberia and Sierra Leone, a research trip to gather oral stories on nursing experiences during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa with the On the Frontlines group, is also explored. He explains that, “The project was my first exposure to global health, and definitely makes me think it is something that I want to do long term and incorporate into the rhythm of my career, regardless of what I do.”
To read the full profile click here.
For Orloff’s reflections on his trip to West Africa with the On the Frontlines working group visit our blog, here.
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.
New Course in Spring 2020: “Menstruation, Gender, and Rights: Interdisciplinary Approaches”
Now open for enrollment for Columbia and Barnard students.
Led by the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group, “Menstruation, Gender, and Rights: Interdisciplinary Approaches” will explore the contemporary discourse around menstruation in global and local contexts.
Students in the course will develop a proposal for an interdisciplinary research project and engage in a workshop on public engagement with The OpEd Project.
The course will be co-taught by an interdisciplinary team of working group faculty fellows, including:
Inga Winkler, Lecturer in Human Rights
Noémie Elhadad, Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Lauren Houghton, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
Anja Tolonen, Assistant Professor of Economics, Barnard College
Chris Bobel, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston.
The development of this course was funded by the Columbia University Provost’s Interdisciplinary Teaching Award, which funds the creation of a new course with up to $20,000.
For a complete course description and call number, click here.
To view the course syllabus, click here.
For more on the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group check out their blog, like them on Facebook and follow on Twitter.
LIVESTREAM: Policy and Practice in Interdisciplinary Menstrual Health
The day-long Multifaceted Menstruation workshop took place November 22, 2019 at Barnard College.
The CSSD Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group hosted an interdisciplinary day-long workshop entitled Multifaceted Menstruation that evaluated the current state of research on menstruation, with interest in examining whose voices are being represented, which actors shape the dominant narrative, whose voices are marginalized, what gaps in data, research, and policy exist, and how interdisciplinary collaboration may help remedy some of these gaps.
A panel discussion entitled “Policy and Practice in Interdisciplinary Menstrual Health” concluded the day.
To watch the livestream video of the panel discussion, click here.
For more information about the event, click here.