Barnard Center for Research on Women

Young Feminists Take on Activism and Organizing

In this panel, young feminist activists discuss their areas of interest, what they see as the major challenges for feminist movements, how organizing today compares to that by previous generations, intersections between feminism and other approaches to social justice, and how to build coalitions that can enact structural change. Panelists include Dior Vargas, Sydnie Mosley '07, and Julie Zeilinger '15. The discussion also included Jessica Danforth, who is not included in the recording at her request. Dina Tyson '13 moderated the panel.

Sonia Pierre and the Struggle for Citizenship in the Dominican Republic

Sonia Pierre (1963-2011), mobilized communities in the Dominican Republic to advocate for citizenship and human rights for Dominicans of Haitian descent. As the director of Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitiana (MUDHA), she used legal challenges in domestic and international courts to defend the citizenship rights of first and second generation children born on Dominican soil. This panel highlights the activism of young women who are moving forward with Sonia Pierre's work on behalf of Dominicans of Haitian descent, and addresses the question of how international pressure impacts efforts by marginalized groups to demand recognition. Panelists include Manuela (Solange) Pierre, Sonia Pierre’s oldest daughter, and the founder and coordinator of the Dominican Network of Young African Descendants (Red Dominicana de Jóvenes Afrodescendientes); Ninaj Raoul, the Executive Director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees; Monisha Bajaj, Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College; Minerva Leticia Solange, daughter of Sonia Pierre; and Miriam Neptune (moderator), video producer and director of Birthright Crisis, an award-winning documentary depicting the cycle of deportation and violence faced by Dominicans of Haitian descent.

Ntozake Shange on Stage and Screen

The 2012-13 Africana Distinguished Alumna Series honors one of Barnard’s most distinguished African American alumnae: Ntozake Shange '70. A playwright, poet, and novelist of startling originality, Shange is best known for her 1975 Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Following the screening of Tyler Perry’s acclaimed 2010 film version of the play, Ms. Shange speaks candidly with Soyica Diggs Colbert, assistant professor of English at Dartmouth College, and Monica Miller, associate professor of English at Barnard, about her groundbreaking work and its controversial adaptation to the screen.

Janice Haaken

Since visual images invoke the spectator's experience of unmediated access to the inner world of the subject, the evocative power of photographic images may readily reproduce forms of voyeurism. This under-theorizing becomes particularly problematic in projects that document the lives of migratory and marginalized women. Drawing on several decades of prior field research and documentary film projects, Professor Haaken presents a study carried out with women refugee and asylum-seekers in the UK. In discussing photographic images from the study, Haaken provides a framework for working through a series of ethical, political, and methodological dilemmas. She draws on psychoanalytic feminist theory, critical psychology, and participatory action research methods to argue for the importance of an approach to the visual that includes the dynamics of spectatorship as well as the dynamics of the research setting itself as an affectively rich and conflicted site of knowledge production.

Staking Our Claim: Trans Women's Literature in the 21st Century

Celebrating the release of The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard (Topside Press, 2012), four of the volume's contributors, Ryka Aoki, Imogen Binnie, Red Durkin, and Donna Ostrowsky come together to read from their work. Following the readings, the writers discuss future of literature, the complex ways that literary trans narratives will evolve in years to come, and their own stories of characters navigating relationships, gender, family, work, race, and more. This panel, co-sponsored by Barnard Library, Topside Press, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women, is moderated by Reina Gossett.