Writers Danticat and Brown on feminism and Caribbean diaspora

Edwidge Danticat
(photo: Jonathan Demme)

Barnard Center for Research on Women

presents

Caribbean Feminisms on the Page:

Edwidge Danticat and Victoria Brown

Thursday, September 17, 6:30pm

Barnard alumna Edwidge Danticat and novelist Victoria Brown come together in the second event in the series, Caribbean Feminisms on the Page. This series places distinguished writers in conversation with emerging authors to discuss issues including feminism, diaspora, and method.

Free admission. 

For information, 

click here.

Edwidge Danticat is a 2009 MacArthur fellow and is the author of several books, including Brother, I’m Dying, which was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. This year, she will publish a picture book, Mama’s Nightengale, and a young adult novel, Untwine.

Victoria Brown is the author of Minding Ben (released in paperback as Grace in the City), a novel about a teenager from Trinidad working as a nanny in New York City. She has an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, NBC news, New York Magazine, The Sunday Salon Fiction Zine, and Babble. She teaches in the English Department at LaGuardia Community College, and is currently at work on her second novel.

Event Oval, Diana Center
Barnard College
3009 Broadway, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Flex and Lite Feet dancers say there's "No Such Thing as Neutral"

BARNARD CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON WOMEN

presents

NO SUCH THING AS NEUTRAL

NYC STREET DANCE SYMPOSIUM

Leaders from the Flex and Lite Feet urban dance
communities gather for a lecture-demonstration and dance battle

Ali Rosa-Salas 
lectures on
No Such Thing as Neutral

Saturday, November 8, 3pm-8pm

Event Oval, The Diana Center
Barnard College

A day-long symposium about two distinctive New York City street dance forms (Lite Feet, founded in Harlem, and Flex, started in Brooklyn) will explore how these urban dance forms—known for improvisation, informal teaching methods, and the central role of marginalized communities of color in their production—are often figured in opposition to more traditional dance forms, but are making significant contributions to the contemporary dance world.

Countless forms of dance created and performed in public spaces are bundled under the umbrella of “vernacular” or “street,” which are recognized for their emphasis on improvisation, informal teaching methods, and the central role
 of communities of color in their production. Yet they are often figured primarily in opposition 
to traditionally valorized forms
 of dance such as ballet and modern dance. With this project, Ali Rosa-Salas highlights the contributions of women who participate in movement-based styles that engage notions of subjectivity and the body in their work while utilizing the technical formalities of abstraction. These New York City-founded dance forms speak directly to the centrality of gender, racial, and community identity in art-making and how such inquiries propel local art forms into international cultural movements.

Symposium schedule:

3pm-5pm: Join pioneers of the Flex and Lite Feet communities for a lecture-demonstration and discussion moderated by Ali Rosa-Salas. Panelists include Chrybaby Cozie, Tatianna "Tati B" Butler, Alora "Gaia" Martinez, Reggie "Regg Roc" Gray, Diedra Braz, Shelby "Shellz" Felton, and Andre "Dre" Redman.

6pm-8pm: Rep Your Style co-founder Melanie Aguirre will host the first-ever all-women Lite Feet and Flex exhibition showcase. Featured dancers include renowned female Flex and Lite Feet dancers Shellz, KitKat, Android, Betty Spaghetti, Lil Spank, Tootie, Cleo, and Gaia.

Information: bcrw.barnard.edu

Event Oval, The Diana Center

Barnard College

3009 Broadway (entrance at 117th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Are The Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Religion and the Burdens of Black Sexual Politics

A Conference

co-sponsored by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

and 

Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University

Thursday-Friday, October 23-24

We are living through a moment of tremendous change at the intersection of race, religion, and sexuality.This conference will bring together scholars, activists, and religious leaders to unearth and engage with the often-unstated claims about the African Diaspora in relation to gender and sexuality, exploring a range of historical and contemporary phenomena in both scholarship and lived experience.

Speakers include Anthea Butler, Kenyon Farrow, Darnell Moore, Alondra Nelson, Emilie Townes and more.

For complete information and registration, click here.

Welcome to Ntozake Shange's worlds

The Worlds of Shange

presented by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

February 14-15

Performing Shange
Thursday, February 14 (6-8pm)
Free and open to the public
Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

a conversation between Obie-award winning playwright and poet Ntozake Shange and dance artist Dianne McIntyre followed by student performances of Shange's work

Worlds of Shange
A conference
Friday, February 15 (10am-6pm)
Free and open to the public
Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

Featured speakers include scholars and artists shaping scholarly and popular conversations about African-American arts and letters as well as gender in the African Diaspora.

For complete details on this and other programs of the Barnard Center for Research on Women (Barnard College), click here.

Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives: a conference

Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives

Barnard Center for Research on Women presents a conference on the effects of catastrophe on cities, their inhabitants, and the larger world, and how we can address the politics of terror with which states react to their vulnerability.

Friday-Saturday, October 14-15

Miller Theater and Wood Auditorium, Columbia University

This conference, convened ten years after September 11, 2001, aims to explore the effects of catastrophe and to imagine more life-affirming modes of redress and reinvention. In a series of presentations and conversations, an international group of artists, writers, and activists will imagine creative responses to disaster and initiate a new collective memory of the events of September 11.

Speakers include Ariella Azoulay, Nina Bernstein, Hazel Carby, Teddy Cruz, Ann Jones, Dinh Q. Lê, Shirin Neshat, Walid Raad, Saskia Sassen, Karen Till, Clive van den Berg, Eyal Weizman, and narrators from the September 11, 2001 Oral History Project at Columbia. Co-sponsored with the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference at Columbia University.

To register, click here.

Also notable from BCRW this fall...

Five courses on culture and creativity, including:
 
Storytelling Life (Elizabeth Whitney)

Women's Cultures/Women's Lives (Leslie Calman)

Seeking Your Voice: A Poetry Workshop (Patricia Brody & Eva Miodownik Oppenheim)

Multicultural Memoirs: Personal Histories of Family, Politics, and Identity (Lori Rotskoff)

Self/Portraits: Women Artists in Modern America (Lori Rotskoff)

All courses take place in Barnard Center for Research on Women, 101 Barnard Hall. For complete information schedule, fees and registration, call 212-854-2067.

Iranian "Circumstance"

‘Circumstance,’ a Film of Underground Life in Iran
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, August 19, 2011

Feminist activism and the academy

Conference: Activism and the Academy: Celebrating 40 Years of Feminist Scholarship and Action

September 23-24

Registration in Barnard Hall lobby

Barnard College
Broadway at 116th Street, Manhattan

Forty years ago, the Barnard Center for Research on Women began its mission of using research and knowledge to advance feminist scholarship and long-term partnerships with activist groups. Inspired by the new women’s movement, BCRW became part of an historic moment that witnessed the proliferation of feminist activism, the establishment of women’s studies programs and women’s centers, and the founding of women’s bookstores and other cultural projects. This fall, we bring together our past, present and future collaborators as well as kindred institutions, scholars and activists engaged in social justice feminism to consider what kinds of collaborative projects are possible when scholarship and activism are joined.

The anniversary conference will also include a special reception with a performance by Suzanne Vega ’81 and remarks from Janet Axelrod ’73, as well as keynote lectures by Sonia Alvarez and Mamphela Ramphele.

For a list of speakers and all program information, click here.

For directions to Barnard College, click here.

Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability

Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability

The Scholar & Feminist Conference XXXVI

Barnard College

Saturday, 2/26 (9-5pm)

This year's Scholar & Feminist conference brings together feminism and disability studies, two fields that have contributed to the interrogation of the public/private divide, and when brought together, radically contest and amplify the ways in which this split has produced extremely thin understandings and practices of accessibility, participation, livelihood, visibility and integration. Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability will look closely at the ways in which political action and cultural production contribute to new ways of imagining what an inclusive society might look like for all. Through dance, film, political engagement and dialogue, we will make our way from Barnard College to New York City to the larger world and back again, exploring the ways in which artistic endeavors, scholarship, and politics have all led to mobilizations for feminist and disability activism. The conference features a series of workshops on topics including parenting and disability, alternatives to creating community in the face of privitization and state budget cuts, films on disability, and a new project on oral histories with Barnard and Columbia alumnae who identify as disabled. The day concludes with a special performance by the Heidi Latsky Dance Company, a fully integrated dance group.

Panelists include Nirmala Erevelles, Carrie Sandahl, Susan Schweik, Alice Sheppard, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rachel Adams, Pam Cobrin, Faye Ginsburg, Ansel Lurio, Kate Schaub, Penny Wolfson, Mary Marshall Clark, Ynestra King, Julie Maury, Stacey Milbern, and Akemi Nishida. ReelAbilities Film Festival will present a series of groundbreaking short films made by and about different deaf communities from around the world.

A conference website and online registration will be available online in late January. Please join our email list or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.