Women's Studies Department Faculty

NEFERTI XINA TADIAR

Professor Women's Studies in Barnard College and
Director of the Center for Critical Analysis of Social Difference in Columbia University

Research and Teaching Interests:

Neferti Tadiar’s academic interests include transnational and third world feminisms; postcolonial theory; critical theories of race and subjectivity; literary and social theory; cultural studies of the Asia Pacific region; and Philippine studies. Her work concerns the role of cultural practice and social imagination in the production of wealth, power, marginality and liberatory movements in the context of global relations. While her research focuses on contemporary Philippine and Filipino cultures and their relation to political and economic change, she addresses, more broadly, questions of gender, race, and sexuality in discourses and material practices of nationalism, transnationalism, and globalization. She is currently working on a book-project entitled: Discourse on Empire: Living Under the Rule of Permanent War and beginning a new research project entitled Schooling National Subjects: Experience and Education in US Colonial Philippines.

Publications:

Books

Things Fall Away: Philippine Literatures, Historical Experience and Tangential Makings of Globality (Duke University, forthcoming)

Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representation, co-edited with Angela Y. Davis (Palgrave Press, 2005)

Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order (Hong Kong University Press/ Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2004); Winner of the Philippine National Book Award (2005)

Articles

“Challenges for Cultural Studies Under the Rule of Global War”, Kritika Kultura, no. 4 (March 2004): 34-47.

"In the Face of Whiteness as Value: Fall-out of Metropolitan Humanness”, Qui Parle, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 143-182

"Filipinas ‘Living in a Time of War’" in Body Politics: Essays on Cultural Representations of Women’s Bodies, ed. Odine Ma. de Guzman (Quezon City: Center for Women's Studies, University of the Philippines, 2002). Reprinted in Melinda L. de Jesus, Pinay Power (Routledge, 2005)

“Himala [Miracle]: The Heretical Power of Nora Aunor’s Star Power,” Signs: A Journal of Women and Culture, vol. 27, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 703-741.

“The War To Be Human / Becoming Human in a Time of War,” (translated into Portugese) Revista Estudos Feministas, vol. 9, no. 2 (December 2001): 360-366. Reprinted in Andrea Smith, ed. The Color of Violence (South End Press, forthcoming)

“Time, Body and Madness” in Likhaan: Contemporary Philippine Literary Criticism, ed. J. Neil Garcia (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2000)

"The Noranian Imaginary," in Geopolitics of the Visible: Philippine Film Cultures, ed. Roland B. Tolentino (Quezon City: Ateneo University Press, 2000).

"History as Psychology," Pilipinas: Journal of the Philippine Studies group of the Association for Asian Studies, no. 32 (Spring 1999): 1-22.

"Personal Diaspora," Diaspora and Immigration, ed. V. Y. Mudimbe with Sabine Engel, South Atlantic Quarterly v. 98, no. 1 (Winter 1999)

"Prostituted Filipinas and the Crisis of Philippine Culture," Millenium: Journal of International Studies vol. 27, no. 4 (1998): 927-954.
Reprinted in Gendering the International, ed. Louiza Odysseos and
Hakan Seckinelgin (Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002)

"Domestic Bodies of the Philippines," Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, special issue on Southeast Asian Diasporas, ed. Vicente L. Rafael and Itty Abraham, vol. 12, no. 2 (October 1997): 153-191. Reprinted in Filipinos in Global Migrations: At Home in the World?, ed. Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.(Quezon City: Philippine Migration Research Networks, Philippine Social Science Council, 2002)

"Review of E. San Juan, Jr.’s Smile of the Medusa," Amerasia Journal vol. 22, no. 2 (1996): 155-158.

"New Metropolitan Forms" (special issue of Polygraph), editor with Jonathan L. Beller and Mark Simpson (1996) “Manila’s Assaults,” Polygraph 8 (Summer1996)

“The Fantasy-Secret of Killing Time in a Warm Place,” Diliman Review, vol. 32, no. 2 (1995): 32-39. Reprinted in Likhaan: Contemporary Philippine Literary Criticism, ed. J. Neil Garcia (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2000)

“The Quest for the Erotic” (Review of Forbidden Fruit: Women Write the Erotic, ed. Tina Cuyugan), Pilipinas: Journal of the Philippine Studies group of the Association for Asian Studies (Spring1995)

“The Dreamwork of Modernity: The Sentimental Education of Imperial France,” boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture, vol. 22, no. 1 (1995): 143-183.

“Manila’s New Metropolitan Form,” differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, vol. 5, no. 3 (1993): 154-178. Reprinted in Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Philippine Culture, ed. Vicente L. Rafael (Metro Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1994)

“Walter Benjamin and Emergent Literature,” University of the Philippines Journal of English and Comparative Studies. vol. 1, no. 2 (1993): 43-60.

“Sexual Economies in the Asia-Pacific Community,” What’s In A Rim?,
ed. Arif Dirlik (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993). Second edition published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998.

Courses Taught:

Postcolonial Theory

Historical and Cultural Studies of Race and Ethnicity

Racism and Imperialism

Third World Feminisms and Globalization

Topics in Feminist Theory

     Theories of the Body

     Affect and Labor

Aesthetics and Politics

Filipino History and Literature

Asia-Pacific Cultural Studies

Women of Color: Genders and Sexualities

Activist Interests:

Critical Filipino/Filipina Studies Collective (CFFSC), a group of scholars and activists seeking to interrogate and challenge the legacies of Empire (US and Spanish Imperialisms) for past and present communities both in the Philippines and in the Filipino diaspora. [http://cffsc.focusnow.org/]

Institute for Advanced Feminist Research (IAFR), bridging feminist work in the spheres of activism, public culture and academia. Former Director of the "Feminisms and Global War" Project, inaugural project of the IAFR.