Recap: Extractive Media hosts Dr. Macarena Gómez-Barris on Nov. 15

On Wednesday, November 15, the Extractive Media working group hosted Dr. Macarena Gómez-Barris, the Timothy C. Forbes and Anne S. Harrison University Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Chair of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, for a conversation on her new essay "Un-Earthing Extractive Architectures," which was recently published in e-flux Architecture.

The event was followed by a dinner at Lido in Harlem. 

For the original Events page for this seminar, follow this link.

In attendance at dinner, from L to R: Extractive Media co-chair Debashree Mukherjee,  Professor Reinhold Martin, Professor Jane Gaines, Professor Macarena Gómez-Barris, PhD student Cecília Resende Santos, Extractive Media graduate coordinator Hannah Pivo, Extractive Media co-chair Zeynep Çelik Alexander.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Members Delivery Keynote at Copenhagen Conference

Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group members Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo, Lena Sawyer, and Jasmine Kelekay gave a collective keynote at a conference on "Engaging with diversity work as atmospheric work" in Copenhagen on November 28th. They presented the talk as members of Kollektiv Omsorg, based on their recent article "Writing Letters as Counter-Archiving: An Afro-Nordic Feminist Care Practice" which was published in the Meridians special issue on BIPOC Europe, which was co-edited by AfroNordic Feminisms group member Nana Osei-Kofi and Shirley Tate. 

Recap: Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group Meeting from Nov. 9-12

The Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group met in New York from 9-12 November.

Our conversations ranged around the terms that animate our group: "Afro," "Nordic" and "Feminism"; in addition, we shared our work with each other in order to plan a concrete project or set of interventions that our group will engage in during spring of 2024 and the future. We are exploring the following possibilities: 1) a panel at the Scandinavian Studies Association in Seattle in May in conversation with the Nordic Utopias exhibition at the National Nordic Museum; 2) a possible project mapping the genealogy of AfroNordic Feminist scholars and their work 3) staging a series of conversations amongst ourselves in either podcast or textual form about the challenges of doing this work in the US/Nordics, scholarly positionality, language justice in the field, among other topics.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Members Contribute to Special Issue of Kvinder, Køn og Forskning

Two members of the Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group, Elizabeth Löwe Hunter and Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo, contributed to a special issue of the academic journal Kvinder, Køn og Forskning on Racialization and Racism in Denmark, which was recently published. It includes articles in English as well as Danish and a panel discussion on research and education in which Löwe Hunter and Midtvåge Diallo participated.

CSSD Member Joins Over 100 University Professors in Criticizing "Principles of Solidarity. A Statement" Signed by Jürgen Habermas and Others

Extractive Media working group member and Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia, Rosalind C. Morris, joined over a hundred university faculty from around the world in criticizing and condemning the November 13 statement on the Israel-Gaza War published on the website of the Normative Orders research center at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst, Klaus Günther and Jürgen Habermas are among the signatories of the original statement.

For more on this story, read here.

Professor Zeynep Çelik Alexander to Delivery Lecture at e-flux Tonight Entitled "Paper Beats Rock: The Imperial Institute's Media"

e-flux Architecture presents a lecture with Extractive Media working group co-director Zeynep Çelik Alexander entitled “Paper Beats Rock: The Imperial Institute’s Media,” at e-flux on Thursday, November 16 at 7pm.

Follow the registration link below for more information from the e-flux Architecture Lecture series webpage.

CSSD Members Join Feminist Call to Stop Genocide and Occupation in Palestine

Among many members of the Center for the Study of Social Difference who have shown their support for the end to Palestinian Genocide, scholars Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot, Marissa Solomon, and Miriam Ticktin from the Recovery working group have signed on to a recent collective letter of 1,200 signatories from feminist, queer, and trans studies, advocating for the end of the genocide and occupation and a call to free Palestine.

Read the letter here.

Sarover Zaidi from Insurgent Domesticities Participates in Panel at South Asia in Translation Conference

Insurgent Domesticities working group member Professor Sarover Zaidi participated in a panel discussion titled “Translation, Memory, and South Asian Cartographies” on the second day of the South Asia in Translation: Geography, Memory, and Textuality conference held in October of this year.

Professor Zaidi’s talk in this panel was entitled “Horizons, Courtyards and the Languages of Architecture” and focused on the evolution of Indian Ocean geographies, centered around the city of Mumbai.

Motherhood & Technology WG Co-Directors to Guest-Edit Special Issue of The Journal of Medical Humanities

Motherhood and Technology Working Group Co-Directors, Arden Hegele and Rishi Goyal, are guest-editing a special issue of The Journal of Medical Humanities, planned to release in summer 2024. Entitled “Conception and Its Discontents,” and drawing its contributors from an eponymous conference held by the Working Group in May 2023, the issue will explore the pressures and deformations that burgeoning technologies and contemporary political and cultural norms place on the experience and meaning of reproduction. Articles will consider how technologies of reproduction have been taken up without full recognition of their political, legal, sociocultural, biological, or psychoanalytical impacts.

Ana Paulina Lee & Geographies of Injustice Share New Collaborative Podcast Project

Ana Paulina Lee, in conjunction with the Geographies of Injustice working group at CSSD, have shared their most recent collaborative project made with the Rio De Janeiro Candomblé temple, Ilê Omolu Oxum. Those interviewed in this series recuperate the history of their ancestors who were taken into slavery while discussing the current work of maintaining ties to the Candomblé religion and Yoruba diaspora. The podcasts produced from this collective effect are available in Portuguese.

An English translation is available as well.

Paige West & Pacific Climate Circuits Have Published a New Paper in Oryx Journal

Paige West and the Pacific Climate Circuits working group have published a new paper entitled “Reimagining Conservation Practice: Indigenous self-determination and collaboration in Papua New Guinea” earlier this year in the journal Oryx, the International Journal of Conservation published by Cambridge University. The paper focuses on Indigenous community-based conservation methods and is the first to be co-authored by a combination of scholars and activists from Papua New Guinea, the United States, as well as Indigenous Elders from New Ireland.

On the Spatial Design Research of S. E. Eisterer, Member of the Insurgent Domesticities WG

Click this link to read about the fascinating work of Insurgent Domesticities Woking Group member S. E. Eisterer, featured in Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Upcoming Book Release: Architecture of Migration by Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi

Forthcoming from Duke University Press, Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (2023) is the latest publication from Professor Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, the co-director of Insurgent Domesticities and member the Refugee Cities working group. Expected to be released in December, 2023, Architecture of Migration critically challenges humanitarian narratives in architecture, planning, and global crisis management. Ethnographic research conducted with camp residents and aid workers exposes the realities within supposedly temporary camps, now turned into lasting urban settlements. The text’s recounting of histories detail the spatial stories of lives affected by colonialism and political, economic, and environmental turmoil. Siddiqi provides a unique examination of how neoliberal policies impede the development of spaces for the world's vulnerable populations.

Motherhood & Tech WG Member Aya Labanieh Publishes "No Fap: A Cultural History of Anti-Masturbation" in LA Review of Books

Motherhood and Technology Working Group member Aya Labanieh has published a new article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, titled “No Fap: A Cultural History of Anti-Masturbation,” diving into the anxieties around masturbation throughout much of world history up to the present.

Motherhood & Technology WG Fellow to Deliver Public Lecture on the History of Hormones at Sarah Lawrence University

Sarah Lawrence University will host Motherhood and Technology Working Group member Randi Hutter Epstein, MD, MPH, for a lecture (open to the public) on the history of hormones (endocrinology) and the array of actors at play from doctors and parents to hucksters and sleuths. The event is based on Randi Hutter Epstein’s 2018 book Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything.

Scheduled for November 2, 2023, this event is sponsored by the Laura Kirchman Manuelidis '63 Science and Literary Arts Endowment Fund.

Refugee Cities Member Speaks During Nacera Belaza's US Debut of "L'Onde"

Refugee Cities working group member, A. George Bajalia, joined Wesleyan University Director for the Arts Joshua Lubin-Levy in discussion following famed French-Algerian dancer and choreographer Nacera Belaza’s debut performance of “L’Onde” in the United States.

Read more about the event here.

Neferti X. M. Tadiar Discusses "Remaindered Life" (Duke University Press 2022) In Public Books Magazine

Read Insurgent Domesticities co-director Neferti X. M. Tadiar’s interview about her 2022 book Remaindered Life with Harvard Professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies Durba Mirta.

Article can be found here.

Refugee Cities WG Member Achilles Kallergis Participated as a Speaker at Penn State's “(Dis)Place: From Tent Camps to the Future of Urbanism – The Architecture of Migration"

Refugee Cities working group member, Achilles Kallergis, participated in a research symposium, titled “(Dis)Place: From tent camps to the future of urbanism – The architecture of migration” on Nov. 13-14 The symposium was hosted by The College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School at Penn State.

Read more about the event here.

Recovery WG Co-Director Elizabeth Bernstein Publishes Article in Public Books

Recovery working group co-director, Elizabeth Bernstein, published an article in Public Books, titled “Heal Thyself?” The article explores Professor Bernstein’s personal experience with a life-changing illness that began in 2014, describing the challenges faced during the diagnostic process and subsequent journey through various symptoms. The article also explores first-person accounts of those with similar illnesses as well as books reviews of works by Meghan O’Rourke and Ed Cohen.

The article suggests the need for a broader consideration of social transformations to better support relations of care and explores potential models of medicine driven by community control rather than profit.

To read the full article, follow the link here.

Refugee Cities Member Mae Ngai Publishes "The Painful Afterlife of a Cruel Policy" in The Atlantic

Refugee Cities working group member, professor of history, and Lung Family Professor of Asian American studies at Columbia, Mae Ngai, published a new piece in The Atlantic on September 26th, 2023.

In this publication, Professor Ngai tells the narrative of Fae Myenne Ng and her latest historical memoir Orphan Bachelors. Recounting the author's family experiences in San Francisco's Chinatown, the story provides a heartfelt portrayal of the challenges and dynamics faced during the close of the era of Chinese Exclusion.

Read the publication here.