News

Our colleague Ayse Gül Altinay, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Center at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, was sentenced to 25 months in prison earlier this week. She is one of over 2200 Academics for Peace who three years ago signed a statement “We will not be a party to this crime” appealing for an end to violent state-sponsored persecution of Kurdish citizens of Turkey. The investigation in Istanbul has covered only the first 1200 signatories so far, but it might be extended to the second 1000 as well. In this, her fourth, judicial hearing, Altinay was charged with “willingly and knowingly supporting a terrorist organization as a non-member.” The court’s charge and thus the sentencing have no merit.
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On Wednesday March 13, 2019 days after International Women’s Day the Center for the Study of Social Difference’s Women Creating Changed hosted a roundtable discussion to explore the successes and limitations of policies to promote diversity and inclusion in the corporate sector. Held at Maison Francaise, the “Corporate Feminism & Its Discontents” roundtable included notable speakers such as Janice Ellig, Chief Executive Officer of the Ellig Group, Professor Yasmine Ergas, lecturer and director of the Specialization on Gender and Public Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs, Melissa Fisher, a cultural anthropologist who writes on finance, feminism, and the workplace, and Katherine Phillips, the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. + Read More

In advance of the Center for the Study of Social Difference’s (CSSD) Women Creating Change(WCC) five year anniversary roundtable on Thursday September 27th, the Women Creating Change Leadership Council (WCCLC) convened to review progress and discuss next steps. The WCCLC provides a critical link between the University’s faculty-led projects and  global business, academic, and civil society. It is comprised of individuals who are preeminent in the fields of business, law, government, nonprofit, social activism, and academia.
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This September marked not only the ten year anniversary of the Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD) but, the five year anniversary of CSSD’s project Women Creating Change (WCC), one of two streams of research and galvanization that engages distinguished feminist scholars from diverse fields throughout Columbia University who focus on contemporary global problems affecting women and on the roles women play in addressing these problems. + Read More

The following is the prelude by Carol Becker (Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia) to the roundtable discussion “Arts of Intervention” at the anniversary conference of the Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD), “What We Can Do When There’s Nothing To Be Done: Strategies for Change,” which was held on September 28, 2018 at The Forum at Columbia University, New York, New York: + Read More

The following was written in response to the tenth anniversary symposium of the Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD), held at The Forum at Columbia on September 28, 2018, by Mayte López, Graduate Teaching Fellow in the PhD Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILaC) at The Graduate Center, CUNY: + Read More

On July 11, 2018, Simavi and WSSCC hosted a panel discussion during the UN’s High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, about “Putting Menstrual Health on the 2030 Agenda,” which featured Institute for the Study of Human Rights professor Dr. Inga Winkler as both the keynote speaker and a panelist. Dr. Winkler is director of the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.

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CSSD’s project on Reframing Gendered Violence was featured in the July issue of EuropeNow, which was dedicated to “The Gender of Power.” + Read More

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, director of CSSD’s working group on Unpayable Debt and award-winning filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar and professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was profiled on Univision. + Read More

The second part of a MOOC created by Alice Kessler-Harris, past director of CSSD’s working group on Social Justice After the Welfare State and Professor of American History Emerita at Columbia University, was recently launched by Columbia and the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society. “Women Have Always Worked: The U.S. Experience 1700 – 1920” started this past fall and is available free to the public. View the MOOC here.

Marianne Hirsch, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and co-director of CSSD’s Reframing Gendered Violence working group, recently published an op-ed on the truthout website titled “Three Lessons About Autocracy I Learned as a Child in Communist Romania.” + Read More

CSSD recently announced the winners of its competition for media fellows joining its project on “Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence.” Supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the project brings together an international community of scholars, practitioners, journalists, and activists to study the role of religion in naming, framing, and governing gendered violence, with a focus on the Middle East and South Asia. + Read More

Rebecca Jordan-Young, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College and past director of CSSD’s working group on Science and Social Difference, recently published an article in The Guardian called “We’ve been labelled ‘anti-sex difference’ for demanding greater scientific rigour.” + Read More

On May Day, 2017, CSSD’s Unpayable Debt working group launched its PRSyllabus, a resource to study Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt crisis in the context of over one hundred years of colonial governance by the United States. + Read More

The first part of the “Women Have Always Worked” MOOC (massive open online course), led by Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History Emerita at Columbia University and former project director of CSSD’s Social Justice After the Welfare State, was recently launched on the edX platform. + Read More

CSSD’S deadline for proposal submissions for 2017 projects has been extended to Monday, March 20th. Proposals may be submitted for consideration by any Columbia or Barnard faculty member(s) whose project aligns with the mission of CSSD.

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Anupama Rao, Associate Professor of History, Barnard College, and director of the recently completed CSSD project on Gender and the Global Slum, published an opinion piece in the New York Times on an Indian Supreme Court ruling that bans political appeals to identity.

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David Scott, Professor of Anthropology at the Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia University, and former co-director of CSSD’s Digital Black Atlantic Project, received the Distinguished Editor prize from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for his work on Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.

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Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University and director of CSSD’s working group on Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, reviewed Katherine Zoepf’s Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World  in the latest issue of the Women’s Review of Books. + Read More

Laura Ciolkowski, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference and Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was interviewed on the WFUV podcast “Issues Tank” on the subject of rape culture and “locker room talk.” + Read More

Laura Ciolkowski, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference and Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, published her Rape Culture Syllabus in the October 15th issue of Public Books. + Read More

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and director of the CSSD project on Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy, appeared on a CBS Sunday Morning program about “Latinos and the Vote.” + Read More

Rachel Adams, CSSD Director, Professor of English and American Studies at Columbia University, and director of the CSSD project on Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture, recently published an article in the Independent on the universal ambivalence toward people with disabilities.

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CSSD is initiating a broad-based exploration of questions raised by precision medicine—an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person—in such fields as law, ethics, social sciences, and the humanities. + Read More

CSSD is housing a new three-year initiative on “Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence,” to be co-directed by Professor Lila Abu-Lughod (Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality/Anthropology). + Read More

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and Project Director for CSSD’s project on  “Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy” recently appeared on an episode of HBO Latino’s “Habla y Vota” discussing Latinos’ influence on U.S. politics.

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Paige West, Professor of Anthropology at Barnard and Columbia and director of CSSD’s project on Pacific Climate Circuits and Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Columbia and director of CSSD’s project on Gender, Religion, and Law in Muslim Societies, were featured in the recent Atlantic article “The Invisible Labor of Women’s Studies.” + Read More

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, co-director of the CSSD project “The Rural Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya” and University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, was recently interviewed by the New York Times for an article on the nature of violence among marginalized people. + Read More

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and co-director of the CSSD project “Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy,” recently directed the video “Life Outside: Rosalie Comes Home,” the first in a series documenting formerly incarcerated people over the age of 60 who are released from prison after having served lengthy sentences.

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Katherine Pratt Ewing, Professor of Religion, Columbia University, and co-director of CSSD’s project “Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies,” was awarded a grant by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for her project on “Sufis, Salafis, and the Public Square.”

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Marianne Hirsch, co-director of CSSD’s Women Mobilizing Memory project and Professor of English and Comparative Literature and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University, was elected a 2016 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   + Read More

Jean Howard, George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, co-director of CSSD’s Women Mobilizing Memory working group, and former director of CSSD, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Brown University. + Read More

Documentary photographer Susan Meiselas  and member of CSSD working group Women Mobilizing Memory recently received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Columbia University. + Read More

CSSD has awarded a two-year grant for $35,000 to an interdisciplinary faculty group that is developing a comparative research and public engagement project examining the emergence and impact of massive debt on vulnerable polities and populations. + Read More

Laura Ciolkowski, CSSD Associate Director and Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, was recently featured in a Reuters story about the literature humanities course she teaches at the Taconic Correctional Facility, a medium security women’s prison in Bedford Hills, New York. + Read More

Rachel Adams, CSSD director and Professor of English and American Studies at Columbia University, appeared on Al Jazeera to discuss American playwright Arthur Miller, who institutionalized and never publicly acknowledged his son Daniel, who has Down Syndrome. + Read More

Democracy Now broadcast a clip of Marianne Hirsch, CSSD member and Columbia Professor of English and Comparative Literature, speaking on January 29, 2016, at New York University about state and university actions against academics in Turkey.

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The Center for the Study of Social Difference joined over 25 international higher education organizations in signing a joint public letter addressed to Turkish government officials registering concern over the official treatment of academics. + Read More

Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Social Science at Columbia University and Project Director of CSSD’s working group on Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies, delivered the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at American University in December. + Read More

The journal Ethnicities recently ran a review symposium of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?—the book by Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Social Science at Columbia University and Project Director of CSSD’s working group on Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies. + Read More

Farah Jasmine Griffin, CSSD project co-director of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women and William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia, will lead (with Alondra Nelson, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies and Dean of Social Sciences) Columbia University’s participation in a White House research initiative to advance equity for women and girls of color.   + Read More

Alisa Solomon, Women Mobilizing Memory member and associate professor of journalism at Columbia University, wrote in The Nation that “Hamilton” is not only a game changer because it brings rap to Broadway, but also because it integrates the contemporary musical style so seamlessly with the styles and structures of traditional musical theater. + Read More

Notes on the August 2015 course on “Art, Migration, and Human Rights,” offered by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, which partners with CSSD’s Women Mobilizing Memory working group. + Read More

Zeynep Gambetti, a member of the CSSD working group Women Mobilizing Memory and participant in the Collaboration and Co-Resistance conference and workshop, appeared on Democracy Now on September 11 to discuss the current series of attacks on Kurdish citizens and HDP party offices in Turkey. + Read More

The CSSD working group Digital Black Atlantic Project (DBAP) is starting the academic year with an array of honors and awards.

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Lila Abu-Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving? received a favorable review from Leti Volpp in Public Books.

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The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) was recently forced to suspend a sporting policy that CSSD project director Rebecca Jordan-Young and her working group, Science and Social Difference, had been contesting for the past three years. + Read More

The Center for the Study of Social Difference recently released its annual report for 2014-15. + Read More

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Director of the CSSD working group Rural-Urban Interface: Gender and Poverty in Ghana and Kenya, received an Honorary Doctorate in the Humanities from Yale University. + Read More

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant for 2015-2016 for the initial development of sx:archipelagos, a peer-reviewed digital publishing platform that emerged from CSSD’s working group, the Digital Black Atlantic Project (DBAP).

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Less than 25% of Columbia University’s total faculty members are minorities and only 18% of its tenured faculty fit that demographic. The percentage of tenure track faculty that are women is a meager 26%. + Read More

Vienna’s “Die Presse” reviewed the “Mobilizing Memory” exhibit that was created by the CSSD working group Women Mobilizing Memory and launched in Istanbul in 2014. + Read More

In fall 2015, CSSD will convene two new working groups: Pacific Climate Circuits, which will apply lenses of race, class, gender and sexuality to current analyses of climate change in the Pacific Region, and The Legacy of Bandung Humanisms, which will examine the post-colonial developing world’s espousal of a radical brand of humanism and self-determination.   + Read More

Lila Abu-Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press) was named a “Best Book of 2014 on the Middle East” by Foreign Affairs.    + Read More

Women Creating Change (WCC) invites proposals for a new working group project that would begin in 2015. WCC will provide seed money of $45,000 over three years to working groups of scholars and practitioners whose projects are consistent with the mission of the Center (socialdifference.columbia.edu) and the specific goals of Women Creating Change (womencreatingchange.columbia.edu).  Submission Deadline: Monday, March 2, 2015.   + Read More

Nancy Kricorian‘s essay “Pilgrimage as/or Resistance,” which was originally presented earlier this year at the Women Mobilizing Memory workshop at Depo in Istanbul, Turkey, has been published by Guernica.