This year's Rennert Forum celebrates the life and work of Helen Suzman, the iconic
South African leader who devoted her life to the fight against apartheid. The opening
event, which coincides with the opening of an exhibition entitled "Helen Suzman: Fighter
for Human Rights," in the Diana Center, will feature world-renowned human rights
activists Helen Lieberman, Virginia Magwaza-Setshedi and Nobel Peace Laureate Jody
Williams. Professor Yvette Christiansë will moderate and provide introductory remarks.
Panelists include: Helen Lieberman, founder and honorary president
of Ikamva Labantu (The Future of our Nation), a South African grassroots social
development organization; Virginia Magwaza-Setshedi, human
rights activist; Jody Williams, Nobel Women's Initiative, 1997 Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate; and Yvette Christiansë, associate professor of English at
Fordham University.
This event is co-sponsored by the Dobkin Family Foundation, the Tolan Family Foundation, and Ralph and Emily Simon Foundation.
For additional information about or to contact
the organizations represented by the panelists, please visit their websites, linked below:
Helen Suzman was a member of the South African Parliament for 36 years, from
1953-1989. She was the sole opposition voice condemning apartheid during the
13-year period (1961-1974) when she was the governing body's only member of the
Progressive Party. The exhibition explores nearly four decades of Suzman's life and
vision through photographs, personal letters, quotations from speeches and news
articles. Suzman was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Price in recognition of her
contribution to the pursuit of justice in South Africa. She received the United Nations
Award of the International League for Human Rights in 1978. In 1989, Queen Elizabeth
made her an Honorary Dame Commander (Civil Division) of the Order of the British
Empire. Suzman died on January 1, 2009, at the age of 91. Flags across South Africa
were flown at half-mast in her honor. The exhibit will open to the public on February 9
in conjunction with a panel discussion on International Human Rights and will continue
through March 25.
Though widely regarded as the most racist regime on earth, the apartheid
government in South Africa learned from policies and practices long extant in
the United States. Before apartheid was institutionalized, South African social
scientists, educators and politicians were among the most astute observers of racial
segregation and white supremacy in the U.S. In this lunchtime lecture, Professor
Esch shows how white South Africans studied U.S. history and mimicked its
practices in implementing apartheid, from so-called anti-miscegenation laws to the
pass-book and homeland systems.
Elizabeth Esch is assistant professor of History and American Studies at Barnard
College, where she teaches classes on the history of the United States, race and
empire. Her work has appeared in Souls: a Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and
Society; Cabinet: a Quarterly Journal of Art and Culture; and Historical Materialism.
This talk offers a new reading of postcolonial women's writings. The conventional
model since the 1980s has been to emphasize issues of silence and invisibility,
the desire for voice and narrative space, and self-representation as a form of
empowerment and transformation. What is often eclipsed as a result is a valuable
political ethic based on coalition and solidarity with oppressed and marginalized
figures. By working across an expansive literary archive, stretching from Mary Prince's
slave narrative to more recent works by Miriama Bâ, Bapsi Sidhwa, Edwidge Danticat
and Shani Mootoo, Professor Donnell will identify an alternative framework for reading
postcolonial women's writing, presenting a new model of feminist criticism rooted in
solidarity and coalitional ethics.
Alison Donnell is reader in the Department of English and American Studies
at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of Twentieth Century Caribbean
Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary and Critical History and has
been a Joint Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
since its founding in 1998.
Elizabeth Freeman is associate professor of English at the University of California, Davis.
She specializes in American literature and gender/sexuality/queer studies, and her
articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals. Her first book was The Wedding
Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture, and she is the editor of
Queer Temporalities, a special double issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian Gay Studies
13.2/3 (Winter/Spring 2007). Her second book, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer
Histories, will be published by Duke University Press next year. Her talk will be drawn from
this forthcoming project and frame the project of erotohistoriography—loosely, a project of
encountering the past in which the body is an instrument. It seeks to offer a revised history
of sexuality by centering queer pleasures and proposing the body as site of historical
encounter, in and across time. Through these encounters across time, we might get a
glimpse of historically specific pleasures and ways of organizing a life that exceed the
current cramped politics of same-sex marriage as end game of sexual liberation.
Already among the most vulnerable populations worldwide, women and other
marginalized groups have been the most acutely affected by the instabilities
propagated by climate change. Issues such as water scarcity, drought, and other
environmental problems threaten the world's food supply, making it more difficult for
disadvantaged groups to obtain the basic necessities of life. Increased temperatures
and more intense weather patterns raise the likelihood of illness and disease,
especially among the poor. Diminishing resources, known to increase conflict and
war, are leading to greater numbers of "climate refugees" and displaced people. In all
of these situations, women and racial minorities are disproportionately affected by the
dangers that climate change poses to our world. Looking at these issues in a wide
variety of contexts, our distinguished panelists and keynote speakers will share the
challenges and complexities of working within multiple justice movements, including
movements for environmental, racial and gender justice. How does social exploitation
parallel environmental exploitation in regional and global contexts? How can diverse
affected groups find common ground? The 2010 Scholar and Feminist Conference
on feminism and climate change will bring together a wide array of pioneering
environmental activists, artists and scholars who have focused on the gender, race
and class components of global climate change.
Keynote speakers will be Majora Carter, environmental justice activist and president of
the Majora Carter Group, a "green" economic consulting firm; and Joni Seager, scholar
and activist in feminist geography and global environmental policy, and Chair, Global
Studies Department at Bentley University.
Registration is required. Please visit the conference website for online registration and additional information.
This panel will feature a group of reproductive justice activists and birth doulas who
work across the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and women's health, connecting
the traditional reproductive rights movement with new social justice activism that
considers the complete physical, political, and economic well-being of girls and
women. Birth doulas, as trained sources of physical, emotional, and educational
support, work to empower women and support their reproductive choices. How
does childbirth fit into the discussion around reproductive rights, a discussion
that is often based around access to abortion and contraception? How can the
reproductive justice framework help us consider institutional barriers, such as racism
and poverty, that have limited women's empowerment and decision-making when it
comes to their reproductive health?
Panelists include Aisha Domingue, doula coordinator at the Brooklyn Young
Mothers Collective; Mary Mahoney, assistant director of the Pro-Choice Public
Education Project and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Doula Project; Lauren
Mitchell, health educator and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Doula Project;
and Miriam Pérez, founder and sole blogger at RadicalDoula.com and editor at
Feministing.com.
Conventionally, immigrant "illegality" has come to signify a status, assigned by law to
migrants residing in the United States who arrive outside of authorized channels and
without proper documentation. Conceptualizing illegality simply as status, however,
overlooks the social consequences that this legal category has on the lives of the
undocumented. In her study of Mexican migration to New England, Jacqueline Olvera,
term assistant professor at Barnard College, examines how migrants, who are
constructed as socially invisible yet physically present, negotiate the complexities that
illegality introduces in their everyday lives. Arguing that illegality is a social sphere that
unauthorized immigrants occupy, Olvera shows how illegality shapes the decisions
and actions of the undocumented, and of citizens as well.
Professor Olvera teaches courses on immigration, poverty, communities and social
change, and ethnic conflict. Prior to teaching at Barnard, she taught at Connecticut
College and held a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the
University of Michigan's National Poverty Center. Professor Olvera has received
funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for her research on Mexican migration in
New England.
Competitive interactions between host plants are mediated by disease, while the
effects of disease on hosts are strongly influenced by the community context. This
lecture will present findings from field studies of the barley yellow dwarf virus exploring
the influence of host and vector diversity on the spread of the virus and its effects on
plant communities. These studies show that in natural grasslands, the temporal and
spatial distribution of viruses reflect the vector community, while host competence,
pathogen spillover, and pathogen dilution vary among host species. These processes
have the potential to shape the structure of plant communities.
Alison "Sunny" Power is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology and the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University,
and is a member of the Graduate Fields of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
Entomology, International Agriculture, Conservation and Sustainable Development,
and the Latin American Studies Program. She is also currently serving as dean of the
Graduate School. Her research focuses on biodiversity conservation in managed
ecosystems, interactions between agricultural and natural ecosystems, agroecology,
the ecology and evolution of plant pathogens, invasive species, and tropical ecology.
She is currently leading a working group on the roles of natural enemies and mutualists
in plant invasions at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
(NCEAS).
In honor of both Women's History Month and one particular woman, Jane S. Gould '40,
first permanent director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, we present a
discussion that remembers Jane and places her life and work in the context of the feminist
movements that have improved our lives in so many ways. After graduating from Barnard
in 1940, Jane returned to the College to serve as Director of the Barnard Placement and
Career Planning Office. She became involved with a group of faculty and staff working
to create a Women's Center at Barnard, and in 1971 they succeeded in establishing the
Center, the first organization of its kind. Jane became the first permanent director of the
Center in 1973 and held this position until 1983, playing an enormous role in developing
the programming and mission of the Center. As Jane wrote in her memoir Juggling: A
Memoir of Work, Family, and Feminism, "the Women's Center's very existence tapped a
great reservoir of feminist energy, which—in turn—helped to shape [the Center's] identity.
It was like opening a floodgate." These panelists, many of whom were involved during the
early days of the Center, will speak about the women's movement in the U.S. and globally,
and situate Jane's contributions and the history of the Center as an important part of these
struggles for justice across lines of race, class, and gender.
Panelists include Louise Bernikow '61, author of Among Women and The World Split
Open, and original member of the BCRW advisory board; Christina Greene, professor
of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Temma Kaplan,
professor of History and a member of the Women's and Gender Studies Graduate Faculty
at Rutgers University; Elizabeth Minnich, senior scholar at the Association of American
Colleges and Universities; Fanette Pollack '71, labor and employment lawyer; and
Catharine R. Stimpson, university professor and dean of the Graduate School of Arts &
Science, New York University.
Special thanks to Sue Sacks and Lila Braine for their help in planning this event.
Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
presents its inaugural Artists at the Center event: Superstar! A Tribute
to Mario Montez. Superstar! is a one-day conference celebrating and
discussing the career of one of New York's most gifted performers.
Born in Puerto Rico in 1935, Montez moved to New York while still a
child. He first appeared on screen in Jack Smith's queer classic Flaming
Creatures (1962-63). Later he became Andy Warhol's first drag superstar,
starring in more than ten of his films. Montez was also a favorite of
underground theater, appearing regularly in Theatre of the Ridiculous
productions by Charles Ludlam, Ronald Tavel and John Vaccaro.
For the first time in 30 years, Mr. Montez will return to New York to
talk about his work and life. Joining him will be Callie Angell, Douglas
Crimp, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Ronald Gregg, Maja Horn, Brendan Joseph,
Agosto Machado, Ricardo Montez, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Marc Siegel,
and Carmelita Tropicana.
This event's co-sponsors include: Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University;
CC/SEAS Office of Multicultural Affairs, Columbia University;
Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, New York University;
Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia University;
Barnard Center for Research on Women, Barnard College;
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Columbia University;
Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, Columbia University;
Department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures, Barnard College;
Department of Theatre, Barnard College;
Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University.
"After the Good Life" works with two films of Laurent Cantet
[Ressources humaines/Human Resources (1999) and L'Emploi du Temps/Time
Out (2001)] to engage the new affective languages of the contemporary
economic atmosphere across Europe: languages of anxiety, contingency,
and precarity that take up the space where social democracy, upward
mobility, and meritocracy used to reign. What happens to optimism when
futurity splinters as a prop for getting through life? How to understand
the emergence of this felt crisis in relation to transformations of the
good life fantasy? The question reaches broadly, but the archive
focuses on a variety of crises in the professional classes, which no
longer can delegate precarity to the poor or the citizen sans papiers;
its interest is in exploring how a new cinema of precarity stages the
end of an era of social obligation and belonging by focusing,
microhistorically, on what happens to manner and manners.
Lauren Berlant is George M. Pullman Professor of English at the
University of Chicago. Developing concepts of affective publics since
The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life
(Chicago, 1991), she has completed a trilogy on national sentimentality,
with The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and
Citizenship (Duke, 1997), and The Female Complaint: The Unfinished
Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Duke, 2008). She is
also editor of Intimacy (Chicago, 2000), Compassion (Routledge, 2004),
On the Case (forthcoming) and, with Lisa Duggan, Our Monica, Ourselves
(2001). This talk is from her next book, Cruel Optimism.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU.
Through this offering of comparative cultural and intellectual history, Professor Collins
exposes links between the Black Arts Movement and the Feminist Art Movement
in the United States to address a critical question that is too often tackled without
seeing these movements as central: How did postwar cultural workers deeply
immersed in sociopolitical movements in the United States see their role and work?
Lisa Gail Collins, who joined the Vassar College faculty in 1998, teaches courses
on African American visual art and material culture, interdisciplinary African American
history, feminist thought, and twentieth-century social and cultural movements in the
United States. Professor Collins is author of The Art of History: African American
Women Artists Engage the Past and Art by African-American Artists: Selections from
the 20th Century.
