The Barnard DEI Council Grant

1. Bodies in the Borderlands

A student-led project, Bodies in the Borderlands aims to initiate a community space for trans and genderqueer students at Barnard College. The planned outcomes are a zine series, and a mixed media installation based on interviews conducted with trans and genderqueer students. The project aspires to contribute to the level of awareness on campus about the trans and genderqueer experiences, and about forms of communication, which would not only enhance inclusivity and equity in learning, but also support the well-being of gender-noncomforming students. The project will continue in Fall 2022.

1st zine: Arisaema

2. Barnard Signs the Way

The Grant supports Barnard Signs the Way–conceived and led by Columbia/Barnard’s Sign Language Club [CU Sign]–for a weekend of hybrid workshops, panels, and art excursions in Fall 2022, with and for Deaf advocates and artists. With this intensified program, the project aims to expose the entire Columbia University community to Deaf-Studies-oriented events, and artworks of Deaf artists, and to connect different departments and programs such as Teacher’s College’s Deaf Education program and Columbia Medical Center’s Department of Otolaryngology. Since 2008, CU Sign is the only student club and extracurricular resource for Columbia undergraduates to learn American Sign Language (ASL). Their programming attracts a very high number of Barnard students as the proportion of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students at Barnard College is double of the CDC national average of 0.1%.

3. Akaraka

Akaraka is a student-led community programming project that aims to connect Africans on campus with African immigrants in the New York area, and in the diaspora. The project is named after an Igbo word of the Igbo tribe in Nigeria, and it connotes having control over one’s destiny. Emphasizing the interconnectivity of individual and collective destinies, several events and community gatherings were organized in Spring 2022 in order to foster intra-communal exchange of knowledge and experiences, exposure to the artworks of African communities, and community enjoyment. The Grant supported community gatherings at African restaurants in Harlem, a film screening collaboration [Farewell Amor, Ekwa Msangi, 2020] between Barnard College and African Film Festival at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, and the 2022 Afropolitan event in the Event Oval.

4. The Moving Body-Moving Image Festival

The Moving Body-Moving Image Festival has been organized since 2018 as a biennial social justice film festival at Barnard College. It was conceived and started by Gabri Christa, Associate Professor of Professional Practice and the Director of the Movement Lab, organized every two years with a different theme. It is the only social justice-oriented festival that is part of Screendance. The 2022 iteration of the festival was on the “Moving Body with Disabilities,” and took place between March 28-April 3, 2022. The festival program consisted of live screening events, a live installation, and a week-long online screening access to all Festival films. The Grant supported part of the costs of speaker fees, workshop fees, the screening rights of the films, and the creation of audio descriptions for all of the films screened at the festival. 

5. Language and the Classroom: Reflecting on the Evaluation of Student Rhetorical Expression in Community (Support Initiative)

A project co-sponsored by the Writing and Speaking Fellows Program and the Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP), Language and the Classroom aims to engage the Barnard community in a conversation about language, and racially-biased, gendered, or otherwise structurally-informed perceptions of rhetorics in the classroom. The project leaders aim to initiate a conversation about how the Barnard community can think about the complications and possibilities of linguistic justice every time faculty members ask students to write, discuss, or present, and every time they grade, assess, and comment on a students’ rhetorical expression. Assist. Prof. Dr. Laura Gonzales will give a workshop, and facilitate a conversation on linguistic justice in Spring 2023.  As a one-time support initiative, the Grant funds part of the speaker's fee.

6. A Suitable Suits Makeover (Support Initiative)

Suitable Suits is a Beyond Barnard initiative for students to borrow professional attire when they have in-person or virtual job interviews, and when they want to attend networking events. As a one-time support initiative, the Grant funds part of Suitable Suits’s plans (1) to expand their clothing options to include pieces that will allow trans and genderqueer students to authentically self-present in professional settings, and (2) to eliminate the dry cleaning fees that currently render students responsible for returning the attire in clean condition–in order to provide a more equitable support for First-Generation and Low-Income (FLI) students.

1. Celia E. Nailor - Transforming “Introduction to African-American History”

Celia E. Naylor received one of the Fund for Innovation in Teaching grants for her project to transform “Introduction to African-American History"; this is one of the courses she has been teaching since her tenure at Barnard began in 2010. Fundamental to the curriculum at Barnard, this (or a similar) course was not taught prior to 2010. As part of the project, Naylor will redesign assignments with an emphasis on the interdisciplinary dimensions of African-American Studies; explore potential avenues for community engagement projects that can enrich the course; invite at least three guest speakers; and organize a “field trip” in the New York area. A Barnard student who previously took the course with Naylor (Mikayla "Mika" Moaney, Class of 2024) worked as the undergraduate student assistant for this project. Moaney worked collaboratively with Naylor in order to revise the course; her previous experiences with the course helped with decisions regarding the various changes related to this project. Moaney will continue to work with Naylor in the fall of 2022.

2. Erika M. Kitzmiller - Revising and Reimagining Pedagogy to Advance Anti-Racist Inquiry and Practice

Erika M. Kitzmiller will revise and reimagine three courses as part of her funded project. While she will revise and develop “Purposes and Aims of Educational Policy (EDUC 3032)” and “Arts and Humanities in the City (EDUC 3055),” she will design a new course, titled “Grace Lee Boggs Learning Lab" that she will co-teach with Dr. Saima Akhtar Spring 2023. Additionally, Kitzmiller is in the process of creating an online public course and digital humanities website for her book, The Roots of Educational Inequality (Penn Press, 2022), which may be viewed here. The Fund supported the fees of consultants and educator guest speakers, the wages of research and teaching assistants, and the purchase of resource materials.

3. Jon Snow and Jessica Goldstein - Introductory Biology: Using Small Group Discussions for Community Building and Contextualizing Biology within Society

Jon Snow and Jessica Goldstein of the Biology Department will restructure the curriculum of the introductory biology sequence in order to initiate a STEM- oriented community building space at Barnard College. Their primary aim is to support students in their early STEM careers with inclusive pedagogical strategies that enhance active learning, and create a sense of belonging among students. The Fund supported the fees of pedagogy workshops facilitators, the guest speaker fees, travel expenses, and the summer salary of one project lead. 

4. Meenakshi S. Rao - CSTEP Intensive Research Track Workshops

The Grant Supported Meenakshi Rao’s project to design and hold Intensive Research Track Workshops as part of CSTEP (The Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program) during the academic year, for students who were enrolled in the summer Intensive Research Track Workshop. The project aims to increase the number of women of color who come with marginalized and FLI backgrounds in the field of STEM and research, as well as to increase the retention of all underrepresented students in Barnard STEM majors. The Fund supported the travel expenses of speakers, refreshment expenses, and the stipend of the instructor. 

5. Paul Scolieri - Department of Dance – Anti-Racism in Dance

The Fund supported the Department of Dance to collaborate with the diversity strategist and arts consultant Theresa Ruth Howard. Throughout 2021-2022, Howard led workshops and lectures on anti-racist approaches to dance curation, research, and the creative process. 

6. Alexandra Watson - Cite Black Barnard Faculty

The main goal of Alexandra Watson’s project was to create an immersive and collective digital resource, titled Cite Black Barnard Faculty (CBBF), in order to promote the increased recognition and citation of the works of Black Barnard faculty. The project's activities included a faculty and staff "cite-a-thon" in which participants engaged with, and wrote annotations of texts by Black faculty; a multimedia exhibit in Barnard's Movement Lab; and the first Black Faculty Salon, featuring Professors Monica Miller and Kim Hall. The Fund supported student support; website design and development; and website hosting. The resource, which includes a robust list of texts by Black Barnard faculty, may be found here.