Barnard Center for Research on Women Barnard Center for Research on Women

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 (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.

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.

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.

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.

Some writers have celebrated a new biological
citizenship arising from individuals' unprecedented ability to manage
their health at the molecular level. In this year’s Helen Pond McIntyre
'48 lecture, Dorothy Roberts examines the role of race and gender in the
construction of this new biocitizen in light of the current expansion of
race-based, reproductive, and genetic biotechnologies along with
neoliberal reliance on private resources for people's welfare. Roberts
argues that science, big business, and politics are converging to
support a molecularized understanding of race, health, and citizenship
that ultimately helps to preserve inequities. An internationally
recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate,
Dorothy Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender,
race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming
public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and
bioethics. She is the Penn Integrates Knowledge/George A. Weiss
University Professor, the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell
Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and Professor of Sociology at
University of Pennsylvania.