Since its founding as Pan-African Studies in 1992, Africana Studies at Barnard has been an important home for students who wanted their Barnard education to include radically different ways of viewing the world and knowledge that was connected to a drive for social justice.

The story of this program is, like so many black endeavors, a story of survival and achievement by dedicated, enormously talented people. With support from the Gildersleeve fund, we honor that history with a series of events that celebrate the impact of Africana Studies at Barnard and black studies worldwide: a lecture series featuring three of the most impressive scholars in the field; an exhibit on Africana Studies at Barnard; a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston's graduation from Barnard; and a reunion banquet for students, alumnae and faculty.

Events Include:

• Shifting the Terrain for Diaspora Studies:
  Democracy, the Rule of Law, and the 'New' Souls of Black Folk
  A lecture with Kamari M. Clarke
  Thursday, 02/07 6:00 PM
• Black Youth & Empowerment:
  Politics and Rap Music
  A lecture with Cathy Cohen
  Tuesday, 03/04 5:30 PM
• Rethinking Gender in African Universities
  A lecture with Amina Mama
  Tuesday, 04/22 6:30 PM
• Africana Studies 15th Anniversary Banquet
  Friday, 04/04 6:00 PM

For information on these and more anniversary events, call 212.854.9850, or visit www.barnard.edu/africana and click "Africana15."

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This lecture is part of the Virginia C. Gildersleeve lecture series Race, Gender, Community & Rights: Celebrating 15 Years of Africana Studies at Barnard. For additional information, please visit www.barnard.edu/africana.

Professor Clarke is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Yale University. She has degrees in Political Science, Anthropology, and International law. Her research interests in religious and legal movements and the related production of knowledge and power have taken her to intentional Yoruba communities in the American South, traditionalist religious and legal domains in Southwestern Nigeria, international criminal tribunals, and international law training sessions in Ireland, London, Geneva, and Banjul and United Nations board rooms in New York City and The Hague. Her books include Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities and Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness.

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Choreography memorializes women's history. In this lecture, Paul Scolieri, Assistant Professor of Dance at Barnard, explores this idea with his interpretations of ancient Aztec women's ritual dances. He will argue that the configuration of dance, death and femininity in the visual and written descriptions of women's dances throughout indigenous and colonial discourses uniquely represents the experiences, conditions and performances of gender and sexuality in the ancient world.

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On a hot summer day in 1897, Robert E. Peary—the most famed explorer of his day—docked in Brooklyn with the outrageous cargo he'd brought for his financiers at the American Museum of Natural History: six living Inuit, including six-year-old Minik. A century later Peary's great grandchild attempts to rediscover the connections between himself, his great grandfather, and Minik. Staffan Julén's fascinating The Prize of the Pole is a disturbing yet beautiful story that combines archival materials and the breathtaking wonders of Greenland to show the heart-wrenching costs of American expansionism. The screening will be followed by a discussion examining the sexual and gendered fault lines that have been written out of Julén's script but nevertheless were an integral part of the erotics of what constituted Victorian "science" at the end of the 19th century.

Lisa Bloom is the author of three books, including Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions, to date the only critical book on the Arctic and Antarctic written from a feminist perspective.

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A Love During the War is a docudrama following the experiences of Aziza, a journalist who is separated from her husband when the Democratic Republic of Congo erupts into civil war. Aziza reunites with her husband in Kinshasa, but the memory of the horrors suffered by other women during the war still haunts her. Despite her husband's protests, she returns to Eastern Congo to find that the legacy of violence continues to infect the lives of women young and old. However, not everyone remains a victim as women have started denouncing the abuses they suffered.

Osvalde Lewat-Hallade started her career as a journalist. She produced her first documentary, Upsa Yimoowin or The Pipe of Hope, in Toronto in 2001. That film denounces the sidelining of Native Americans. Her second film, Beyond the Pains, was made in 2003 and is based on the life of a prisoner who was sentenced to four years in jail for a minor crime and ends up being imprisoned for 33 years. Beyond the Pains was the recipient of the TV Film Prize at the Avanca City Festival and of the Human Rights Prize at the Vues d'Afrique Festival in Montreal. A Love During the War, her latest documentary film, won two jury mentions in Fespaco and the Montreal Film Festival. She has just completed a feature film, Black Business.

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Audio from this event has been added to the conference website. Please click the links below to download MP3 files:

• The Scholar & Feminist 2008: Part 1 (MP3)
• The Scholar & Feminist 2008: Part 2 (MP3)
• The Scholar & Feminist 2008: Part 3 (MP3)

The state of democracy in the United States is undeniably troubling. In the last Presidential election, only 55.27% of the voting-age American population cast their ballots. Amazingly, a participation rate of less than two-thirds is still the highest turnout since 1968. our representational political system represents few, particularly when we acknowledge the lines of race, class, and gender.

This year's Scholar & Feminist Conference, The State of Democracy: Gender and Political Participation, is particularly timely, as we enter a Presidential election year with especially high stakes. We feel that there is no better time to examine not just who gets elected and how elections work, but the entire state of democracy in the United States. The conference will explore questions about representative and participatory democracy, about alternative models of democracy offered in various social movements and in other areas of the world, and about how to build a democracy that might involve all Americans at all levels. To help us tackle these questions, we've invited a number of political scholars, activists, and policy-makers, including New York State Senator Liz Krueger, Nancy Abudu, staff counsel with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, political cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, director of the Movement Vision Project Sally Kohn, and academic Christine Marie Sierra. Representatives from Code Pink, The White House Project, Make the Road New York, and Activist Response Team (ART) will run lunchtime workshops. The keynote address for this year's conference will be delivered by Lani Guinier, the first black woman tenured professor in Harvard Law School's history and author of several books on both race and gender in the political system and voter rights and democratic theory.

*We regret that Vandana Shiva, who was scheduled to deliver a lecture, will be unable to attend this year's conference due to illness. Please note that the keynote lecture by Lani Guinier has been moved forward to 1:30 pm.

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This lecture is part of the Virginia C. Gildersleeve lecture series Race, Gender, Community & Rights: Celebrating 15 Years of Africana Studies at Barnard. For additional information, please visit www.barnard.edu/africana.

Cathy Cohen is Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, University of Chicago. Professor Cohen is a noted scholar of American politics whose research interests include African-American politics, women and politics, lesbian and gay politics, and social movements. She is the author of The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics and a co-editor of Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (NYU, 1997). Her work has been published in numerous journals and edited volumes including the American Political Science Review, GLQ, NOMOS, and Social Text. Cohen is also editor with Frederick Harris of a new book series from Oxford Press entitled "Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities." She is currently the Principal Investigator for the largest ever national youth survey, The Black Youth Project, which examines the attitudes, resources, and culture of African American youth ages 15 to 25.

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Global DNA rearrangements occur in many cells but are most exaggerated in ciliated protozoa, a type of single-celled organism. During development of the somatic nucleus, these protozoa destroy 95% of their germline genome, severely fragmenting their chromosomes, and then sort and reorder hundreds of thousands of remaining pieces. Professor Landweber's research shows that RNA molecules provide a scaffold to orchestrate DNA rearrangements during development, unveiling a new role for RNA, normally thought of as a passive messenger in gene expression. As an example that inheritance takes place beyond the conventional DNA genome, her work demonstrates that RNA may epigenetically transfer information across generations, hinting at the power of RNA molecules to sculpt the information in our genes.

Laura Landweber is Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Her research seeks to shed light on how cells and nature "compute," read, and rewrite DNA, by processes that modify sequences at the DNA or RNA level. She was named "Distinguished Scientist of the DNA Computing Community" in 2001 at the meeting of DNA Based Computers and in 2005 was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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1968 was a pivotal year in the history of Columbia University, American politics, and youth movements internationally. Estelle Freedman, American historian and a student at Barnard during that tumultuous era, looks back on 1968 from the perspective of subsequent events and historical interpretations. She places her experience of coming of age at Barnard within the contexts of anti-war protests, racial and ethnic identities, and shifting sexual mores. Freedman, now a Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of several influential books on feminism and on sexuality, explores the life-changing process of questioning authority. Drawing on events on campus, in the world, and in her personal life, she evaluates the liberating opportunities as well as the new vulnerabilities that faced her generation of Barnard students.

Estelle Freedman is a U.S. historian specializing in women's history and feminist studies. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in history from Columbia University and her B.A. in history from Barnard College. She has taught at Stanford University since 1976 and is a co-founder of the Program in Feminist Studies. Her most recent publications include The Essential Feminist Reader; Feminism, Sexuality and Politics; and No Turning Back: The History of Feminim and the Future of Women. Her contributions to teaching have been recognized by the Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding Service to Undergraduate Education, the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Rhodes Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Stanford, and the Kahn-Van Slyke Graduate Mentoring Award at Stanford, as well as the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for graduate mentorship from the American Historical Association.

For a photo gallery, video and additional features created in conjunction with this event, please visit: www.barnard.edu/bc1968.

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The Barnard Center for Research on Women is pleased to co-sponsor the next event in the Columbia Institute for Research on Women and Gender's Feminist Classics Series. This spring, the Series explores the legacy of Barnard alum Erica Jong's groundbreaking first novel Fear of Flying. An award-winning writer who has been integral in the creation of the contemporary feminine literature genre, Erica Jong '63 is the author of eight novels, several of which have been worldwide bestsellers. Fear of Flying is the focus of this discussion on what makes a feminist classic an American classic. Panelists Min Jin Lee, Nancy K. Miller, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Rebecca Traister, Aoibheann Sweeney, and Jong herself will take up this question and engage in a discussion on the impact that Fear of Flying has had on generations of feminist writers.

Erica Jong's best known work, Fear of Flying, has sold more than 18 million copies and been translated into 30 languages. In 1998, Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize and the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence in France. In Italy, she was given the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature in 1975. In 1996, she and her family endowed the Erica Mann Jong '63 Writing Fellows Fund, which supports the Writing Fellows and provided for renovations to the building that houses the Erica Mann Jong '63 Writing Center, a program at Barnard that teaches talented student writers to help other students improve their writing.

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Anupama Rao, Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Barnard, will speak about what she terms the "violence of recognition" through the reading of a recent "caste atrocity" that occurred in 2006, which involved the sexual brutalization and murder of a Dalit family in western India. Her lecture will address the symbology of caste violence through an engagement with (and extension of) the concept of biopolitics associated with the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben.

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Despite the fact that enrollment of women studying in the sciences has risen to comparable numbers as that of white men in higher education, women of color are still grossly underrepresented in academic and other science professions. This panel will provide students the opportunity to hear from women who have not only beaten the odds, but have become leaders in their field. Join us while they will share their experiences in balancing work and family responsibilities and discuss the barriers they've faced along the way to success.

Panelists include:

• Dr. Alison Williams, Professor of Chemistry, Princeton University
• Dr. Nkechi Agwu, Professor of Mathematics, Borough of Manhattan Community College
• Peggy Shepard, Executive Director of WE ACT (West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc.)

Please RSVP to apatters@barnard.edu.

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This event is part of the Virginia C. Gildersleeve lecture series Race, Gender, Community & Rights: Celebrating 15 Years of Africana Studies at Barnard. For additional information, please visit www.barnard.edu/africana.

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In this year's Rennert Forum on Women in Judaism, Ruth Behar, Jewish Cuban American anthropologist, writer, and noted feminist, will reflect on the recent literature being produced by diasporic women ethnographers, journalists, and writers, addressing their contradictory and often pained relationships to their home countries. Focusing on the work of Latin American and Caribbean women, she will also include an account of her own return to Cuba and her complicated search for home.

Ruth Behar is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Since 1991 her research and writing have largely focused on her native country, Cuba, which she left at the age of four. Her research on the dwindling yet vibrant Jewish community in Cuba is the focus of her film Adio Kerida (2002). Jewish Cuba is also the topic of her latest book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba (2007).

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This lecture is part of the Virginia C. Gildersleeve lecture series Race, Gender, Community & Rights: Celebrating 15 Years of Africana Studies at Barnard. For additional information, please visit www.barnard.edu/africana.

Amina Mama is Barbara Lee Distinguished Professor at Mills College. Before founding the first Gender Studies Program in Africa at the University of Cape Town, Professor Mama taught social studies and gender studies at a number of European and International Institutions. She is Chair of Gender Studies and Director of the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town. However, she has also worked outside the academic mainstream as a researcher and consultant to various international bodies, and with an array of non-governmental and women's organizations. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Psychology from the University of London. Her current research interests center around bringing gender analysis to bear on subjectivity, social relations and politics. Her major research projects have addressed women in government and politics in a variety of African contexts, militarism, women's organizations and movements, race and subjectivity.

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Since the beginning of her time as President of Barnard College Judith Shapiro has made her mark on a number of issues with wide ranging implications: women's education, to be sure, but also academic integrity and freedom, and women's leadership. She herself has embodied the best qualities of leadership in her guidance of the College and in her willingness to be outspoken on the issues that matter. It is no surprise that she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

Throughout her presidency, Judith Shapiro has also been a supporter of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. She has ensured that the Center has consistently been able to carry out its mission of promoting inquiry and advancing knowledge about women among scholars, activists and artists. She has also been the host for our most important events, welcoming audiences annually to the Scholar & Feminist Conference and the Helen Pond McIntyre '48 Lecture, as well as scores of other events. She moderated panels with wit and verve for conferences like "Margaret Mead's Legacy" in honor of the centenary of Mead's birth, and "Balancing the Equation," on women and girls in science and technology.

To show our appreciation for her support and participation, BCRW is taking this opportunity to involve Judith Shapiro in a Center event as a panelist. We have asked her to speak directly to those issues on which she has made her signal contributions, to look back and tell us what she's learned in her time in the trenches, and more importantly, to look forward to future possibilities for Barnard, for the issues about which she cares so much, and for herself. Joining her in this lively and important discussion will be co-panelists Alison Bernstein, Vice President for Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom at the Ford Foundation and Diana Chapman Walsh, former president of Wellesley College. The evening's moderator will be Barnard's own Anna Quindlen, Chair of the Barnard Board of Trustees and columnist for Newsweek magazine.

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Please join Kimberle Crenshaw, Kim Gandy, Chandra Mohanty, Ellie Smeal and other leading scholars, researchers, advocates, and policy makers from across various disciplines and fields June 5-7, 2008 at the Kimmel Center at NYU for the NCRW Annual Conference. Share information and resources; learn about cutting edge and emerging research on women, gender, and girls; and strategize about ways to work across communities and fields of study.

This year's conference themes will center around where women can have the most impact in the 2008 Presidential election and beyond, including research and policy issues that will need to be addressed with a new administration; challenges women in the academy confront—backlash, shrinking budgets, corporatization, conservative social pressures—and what can be done to counter them; and the implications of the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, generation and other markers of difference for feminist scholarship, leadership, and activism, nationally and globally.

This conference is co-sponsored by Co-Sponsored the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU, BCRW, the Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women at Brooklyn College, the Fisher Center for the Study of Women and Men at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the Center for the Study of Women and Society at CUNY.

For more information and registration, please visit www.ncrw.org.

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This June, BCRW joins Domestic Workers United in their educational efforts on fair labor standards for domestic workers in New York, including a living wage, basic benefits and health care. The first National Domestic Workers Alliance conference brings organizations from across the country together to discuss how best to protect the 200,000 domestic workers in New York, including a New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is but one step in a long path towards the social, economic and political change needed to address the root causes for the conditions facing domestic workers today, including nannies, housekeepers, elder caregivers and anyone working in the private home for individual heads of households. The conference seeks to bring recognition to the domestic workforce as a real workforce (rather than dismissing domestic work as "women's work"), address the generations of unjust exclusions from basic labor laws, and account for the reality of the isolated, vulnerable working conditions that have been the breeding ground for some of the most egregious labor violations in the history of this country.

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