BARNARD'S
CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON WOMEN CELEBRATES 30TH
ANNIVERSARY
New
York, NY, October 25, 2001-- The Barnard Center
for Research on Women will celebrate its 30th
anniversary with a reception and dinner November
9.
The
celebration will begin with wine and hors d'oeuvres
at 5:30 pm, followed by the Dinner of Remembrances,
during which the previous directors of the Center
will speak. The evening will conclude with a
reading by poet, novelist, and political activist,
June Jordan. Professor of African American Studies
and Director of Poetry for the People at the
University of California at Berkley, Jordan
was recently named by Ms. magazine as
"one of America's fiercest literary figures
and social activists."
The Center's mission began in the early 1970s
when the College saw a need to bridge women's
academic work and social activism, to make feminist
theory a vital part of public practice. Celebrated
feminist thinkers Catherine Stimpson and Kate
Millett, both of whom taught at Barnard at the
time, worked to create an environment where
the scholar and the feminist could come together.
Their work has contributed greatly to intellectually-based
activism: Stimpson, who served as the Center's
first Acting Director, went on to found the
journal Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture
and Society, while Kate Millett's Columbia
University dissertation, Sexual Politics,
became a landmark book of second-wave feminism.
In
1971, the Center opened its doors, and one year
later Jane Gould, then director of placement
for Barnard College, was appointed Director.
Under her direction, the Center developed programs
exploring how feminist scholarship could be
used "to assure that women can live and work
in dignity, autonomy, and equality." These programs
included the conferences that have become the
Center's hallmark: the Scholar and the Feminist.
Bringing together academics and activists to
discuss the most pressing topics of the day,
the Scholar and the Feminist conference
set the standard for intellectual inquiry into
the issues that most affect women's lives. In
1979, in a seminal conference titled "The Future
of Difference," the Center brought together
revolutionary thinkers Nancy Chodorow, Alice
Kessler-Harris, Elizabeth Janeway, Audre Lorde,
and Monique Wittig to discuss how the women's
movement would address the differences of its
growing, increasingly diversified constituents.
In light of the now infamous 1982 conference,
"Towards a Politics of Sexuality," the proceedings
of "The Future of Difference" seem rather prophetic.
As Carol Vance's Pleasure and Danger: Exploring
Female Sexuality--the collection of essays
produced after the conference--makes clear,
the clash of anti-pornography feminists and
pro-sex feminists showed the fractures in a
movement that had grown too large to remain
unified by a single vision. Anti-pornography
feminists attacked the conference for including
radical, pro-sex viewpoints. The College responded
anxiously to these attacks, failing to support
the conference in a conversation that remains
on the cutting-edge of scholarship and activism
nearly 20 years later.
By
1991, when Leslie Calman assumed the position
of Director, the women's movement had made terrific
strides, though battles to secure equitable
wages, reproductive freedom, and racial justice
were far from over. To show the broad, continuing
import of feminism, Calman developed programs
to reflect the interests of a broader audience.
Organizing events into ongoing series, such
as "The Rennert Women and Judaism Forum" and
the wildly popular "Women in Film," proved an
effective strategy for widening and diversifying
the Center's audience base. Each year more than
two thousand people attend the Center's lectures
and conferences, which host such prominent scholars,
activists, artists and public figures as Anna
Deveare Smith, Mary Gordon, Lani Guinier, Sister
Helen Prejean, Marjorie Garber, Mary Travers,
Faye Wattleton, Barbara Smith, June Jordan,
and Nawal el Saadawi.
The
current director, Janet Jakobsen, Ph.D., joined
the College in 1999. Today the Center continues
to honor the diversity of women's movements
by linking feminist struggles to those for racial,
economic and social justice. Toward this end,
the Center has used its programming to forge
coalitions with transnational, national, and
citywide organizations. The "Women Seeking Justice"
series, for example, explores the causes and
circumstances surrounding women's imprisonment
and has enabled the Center to take part in the
Redirection Through Education Program
at Bedford Hills Women's Correctional Facility
and to forge cooperative relationships with
organizations like JusticeWorks Community and
the Moratorium Campaign, a worldwide campaign
to end the death penalty. Concluded Jakobsen,
"Such coalitions are indispensable as we confront
a new moment in history. As America makes gestures
toward war and retaliation for the brutal attacks
on New York City and Washington, DC, its citizens
have a greater responsibility to critique the
social powers and structures that govern us."
Contact:
Janet Jakobsen, Center for Research on Women,
212-854-2067
Petra Tuomi, Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7907
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