CSSD Working Group to Launch Course in Spring 2020

In the spring of 2020 CSSD working group Geographies of Injustice will be launching a course entitled “Subaltern Urban Studies” taught by co-directors Anupama Rao and Ana Paulina Lee.

The course, presented in seminar format, will explore how spatial politics intersect with economic inequality and social difference (race, gender, caste, and ethnicity) to produce marginalized and stigmatized spaces such as “favelas,” “slum,” and “ghettos.” The course will be divided between the study of the colonial and the industrial city, going into topics such as public health, housing and the slum, political violence and forms of cultural production.

Anupama Rao is an Associate Professor of History as well as Associate Director for the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

Ana Paulina Lee is Assistant Professor of Luso-Brazilian Studies at Columbia University.

Anupama Rao Delivers Franke Lecture at Yale

Anupama Rao, Associate Professor of History at Barnard and co-director of CSSD working groups Geographies of Injustice and Reframing Gendered Violence, delivered a talk entitled  “Social Abstraction, Historical Comparison: Thinking Caste, Race, and Gender in the Time Capital” at Yale University. It was part of the Franke Lecture Series.

Anupama’s work explores the relationship of caste and political culture. Her book The Caste Question theorized caste subalternity, with specific focus on the role of anti-caste thought (and its thinkers) in producing alternative genealogies of political subject-formation.

You can read more about the lecture and her work here.

Premilla Nadasen elected next President of the NWSA

Premilla Nadasen, Faculty Fellow with Geographies of Injustice and a co-director of Social Justice After the Welfare State, was elected next President of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA).

As President of the NWSA Governing Council, Dr. Nadasen will take office in November 2018 and serve for two years. The NWSA Governing Council serves as the Board of Directors for the organization and meets twice annually: in June and November.

Established in 1977, the National Women's Studies Association has as one of its primary objectives promoting and supporting the production and dissemination of knowledge about women and gender through teaching, learning, research and service in academic and other settings.

New working groups at CSSD launching AY2018-19

CSSD launches six new projects for the 2018-19 academic year. The projects will address gender, race, sexuality, and other forms of inequality to foster ethical and progressive social change.

Racial Capitalism: This working group theorizes the connections between exploitation and expropriation in interlinked political geographies. The Racial Capitalism working group will build on and also expand already existing efforts of the Barnard New Directions in American Studies (NDAS) initiative.
Project Directors: Jordan T. Camp, Christina Heatherton, and Manu Vimalassery

On The Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics: The working group On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics seeks to understand the role of nurses as change agents in the prevention, detection and response to pandemic infectious disease outbreaks.
Project Directors: Jennifer Dohrn, Wilmot James, Steve Nicholas, Victoria Rosner

Geographies of Injustice: Gender and the City: Geographies of Injustice is a working group of interdisciplinary scholars who are interested in asking how spatial politics intersects with inequality and social difference (race, caste, and ethnicity).
Project Directors: Anupama Rao, Ana Paulina Lee

Menstrual Health and Gender Justice: The Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group seeks to further the nascent field of menstrual studies. This group puts particular emphasis on critically evaluating the current state of research and how interdisciplinary collaboration might help remedy some of these gaps.
Project Director: Inga Winkler

Pedagogies of Dignity: Pedagogies of Dignity is an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together formerly incarcerated people, activists, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates from the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Project Director: Christia Mercer

Queer Theory: Here, Now, and Everywhere: Queer Theory: Here, There, and Everywhere is a CSSD working group to discuss, debate and investigate the politics of sexuality and gender in a global frame.
Project Director: Jack Halberstam

Professor Anupama Rao comments on the stereotype of South Asians as "good immigrants" on NPR

Gender & the Global Slum project director Anupama Rao spoke with NPR Podcast Code Switch about Caste discrimination in the United States.

Professor Rao, a historian and author of The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India, said for years, many of the so-called "model minority" of South Asians, who have earned the status of being "good immigrants" in the U.S., came from upper-caste families.

At over three thousand years old, caste hierarchy is one of the oldest forms of social stratification in the world: the community you are born into in places like India, Pakistan and Nepal has designated where you can work, who you can marry, and what your reputation is in life.

A new survey by Equality LABS finds that caste discrimination is playing out in the United States as well.

Gender and the Global Slum project looked at the social hazards of urban informality and its disproportionate effects on women. Professor Rao is also co-director of the new CSSD working group Geographies of Injustice.

Code Switch is a race and culture outlet and a weekly podcast from American public radio network NPR. It began in 2013 with a blog as well as contributing stories to NPR radio programs. The Code Switch podcast launched in 2016.