Barnard College Research Articles

The Time Has Come to [Re]Think Sex

The Time Has Come to [Re]Think Sex Jennifer Tyburczy Conference Review: "Rethinking Sex: A State of the Field Conference in Gender and Sexuality Studies," University of Pennsylvania, 4–6 March 2009 With the aim of celebrating the life and work of Gayle Rubin and commemorating the 1984 publication of her essay "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," Heather Love and her conference committee expertly curated a conference lineup of "thirty scholars working within a range of disciplines about the most significant and pressing questions in gender and sexuality studies." In so doing, "Rethinking Sex" suggested the current scheme for the discipline in unexpected ways that will, especially at a time of global movements and migrations, neoliberal ideologies, and negative affects, inspire a return to the archives, the tracing of realist genealogies, the reconfiguration of modes and methods for knowledge transmission, the reinvigoration of theoretical and pedagogical choreographies (not forward, but sideways or, even, spiral), and the recognition, as Gayle Rubin said twenty-five years ago, of "the political dimensions of erotic life" (35).1 The conference organization was reflective of Heather Love's own philosophy (as articulated in her 2007 book Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History) that the field needs to critique simplistically celebratory accounts of the queer past in order to create a queer future more in line with ever-diversifying queer constituencies. It seemed a consensus at the conference that in order for "queer" to open up intellectual, political, [End Page 355] and sexual possibilities we need to relinquish nostalgia for what was, is, and will be, always and everywhere, a intrapolitically fraught sexual community. Particularly in today's global economic crisis and the vicious competition for resources, security, and a financial leg to stand on, we must recognize that we feel "bad" and analyze and use these energies to reinvigorate sexuality studies to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. "Rethinking Sex" was just as much a conference about conducting sexuality research as it was a conference that suggested ways for undoing particular epistemological frameworks for understanding sexuality. For Love, "Rethinking Sex" mobilized a fantasy to actualize those "storied conferences of the past," such as "Pleasure and Danger" at Barnard College in 1982, where Rubin first delivered "Thinking Sex" as a talk.2 In the midst of what Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter have named the "sex wars" and during one of the most volatile decades in the history of sex education in the United States, the conference was, to make an understatement, controversial. Antipornography and antisadomasochism feminists targeted the conference and tried to shut it down. Calls came in claiming that harm would befall the women at Barnard because of the conference. Barnard President Ellen V. Futter, whose suspicion was apparently aroused by these phone calls, confiscated the conference handbook. Leaflets circulated by Women Against Pornography called the conference participants "deviants." The Helena Rubenstein Foundation dropped its funding for the event. Still, eight hundred people gathered to attend, and the conference was sold out. Thus, Rubin devoted a significant portion of her keynote address at "Rethinking Sex" to the emergence of academic work on sexuality, of which, she humbly noted, she only played a part (e.g., she mentioned other trailblazers such as Alan Bérubé, Joan Nestle, Jonathan Katz, Jeffrey Weeks, Marjorie Garber, Esther Newton, and George Chauncey). Entitled "Blood Under the Bridge: Reflections on 'Thinking Sex,'" Rubin's keynote was a graphically rich and historically dense journey backward in time to revisit the context out of which "Thinking Sex" emerged in an academic and political landscape that was hostile to sexuality scholarship. Rubin reminded us how her controversial presence at conferences such as "Pleasure and Danger" accompanied a larger struggle in the academy at the time. Namely, according to Rubin, conducting research on sex and sexuality issues was the equivalent of "academic suicide." On an optimistic note, Rubin assessed the current academic environment as one of "sea change" and commented that pursuing [End Page 356] queer scholarship is no longer a "death sentence" for university research careers. Perhaps the relative calm and quiet with which "Rethinking Sex" proceeded (one Penn graduate...

Recollecting, Repeating, and Walking Through: Immigration, Trauma, and Space in Mary Antin's <i>The Promised Land</i>

I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life's story? I am just as much out of way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than person whose story I have to tell. --Mary Antin, (1) With these lines, Mary Antin begins her best-selling 1912 immigrant autobiography and establishes immigration as an experience akin to death and resurrection. language of new beginnings is familiar to readers of bildungsroman, immigration narratives, and autobiographies. (1) However, what is remarkable here is Antin's emphasis on death, rather than birth, of her identity. Antin alludes to losses and psychological ruptures that divide her life before and after immigration journey--between living in an eastern European shtetl and in urban Boston, between subject positions of immigrant and American, and between temporalities of past and future. Immigrant autobiographies are commonly structured around this rupture. Yet while critics have usually focused on Land's rosy-hued vision of America as a paradigmatic example of assimilation narrative, this essay shows significance of incommensurable, and hence traumatic, break created by immigration and Antin's attempt to create psychological coherence out of that trauma through related practices of autobiographical narrative and spatial orientation. Published at height of America's great immigration boom, (2) tells a now-familiar story through its text and photographs. Due to worsening economic and political conditions for Jews in Russian territories, at age thirteen Mary Antin immigrates to Boston with her mother and siblings, where they join Antin's father, who had come to America three years prior. family struggles to gain an economic foothold in US, moving frequently in search of cheaper rents and better business opportunities. Owing to her intellectual abilities, immature physical development, and her father's favoritism, Mary goes to school instead of work; her older sister is not so fortunate. (3) As is typical in immigrant autobiographies, Antin emphasizes how she distinguishes herself academically, winning a scholarship to a prestigious private high school. In book's final chapter, Antin triumphantly recounts going to Barnard College, earning money from writing, and learning to speak without an accent. autobiography thus contrasts political, economic, and social restrictions that defined life for Jews in eastern Europe with seemingly unlimited opportunities in United States for those with wit and will to succeed. America is Antin's Zion, Promised Land of autobiography's title, (4) and Antin is heir of ages, ideal citizen worthy of American freedom and opportunity (Antin, Selected Letters 55). (5) In many ways, reinforces idea that America is truly democratic and meritocratic, a place where every immigrant can create his or her own destiny. This assimilationist arc has been primary focus of criticism of autobiography in recent decades. Mary V. Dearborn is typical when she claims that The seems to lack any alternative, protesting voice (42). Sarah Blacher Cohen is more damning; she asserts that the autobiography lacks depth. conquest it describes seems too rapidly won and too unqualifiedly successful.... [I]t certainly prevented her from becoming a profound writer of Jewish-American literature, or for that matter, any kind of literature (31-32). Michael P. Kramer, a more sympathetic reader, nonetheless insists that for Antin, the process of Americanization is wholly unproblematic (128), and that the assimilationism of is more characteristic of American Jews than critics care to admit (123). Matthew Frye Jacobson, however, reads Antin's assimilation as a rebuke to contemporary critics of immigration--nothing less than the core principle in a quiet politics of antinativism (206). …

The Education and Career of Carlotta J. Maury: Part 1

Carlotta Maury (1874-1938) was a paleontologist who specialized in Tertiary mollusks. She was involved in confidential explorations for the oil industry as well as teaching and museum work. This paper—the first of a two-part biographical narrative—traces her educational background and the earlier part of her career. She was born into a family with significant scientific interests and accomplishments. Influenced by the educator Elizabeth Agassiz, Maury attended Cornell University, where despite different academic programs designed to prepare women for occupations considered suitable for them, and the prejudice of male faculty, she obtained a PhD. Her mentor was the paleontologist Gilbert Harris. Women's difficulties in gaining acceptance in fieldwork with men and academic advancement are explored. Maury's failure to be promoted at Barnard College led her to accept a position at a college in South Africa. By 1918, expeditions there, in New York, Louisiana, Trinidad, and one that she led to Santo Domingo had resulted in several publications.

Three Trends Over Eight Presidential Elections, 1980–2008: Toward the Emergence of a Democratic Majority Realignment?

Political Science QuarterlyVolume 124, Issue 3 p. 423-442 Three Trends Over Eight Presidential Elections, 1980–2008: Toward the Emergence of a Democratic Majority Realignment? DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY, DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY is Editor of Political Science Quarterly, Research Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. This article was adapted from his just published PSQ eBook, Eight Presidential Elections, 1980–2008: Dealignments, Brittle Mandates, and Possible Majority Realignment (New York: The Academy of Political Science, 2009).Search for more papers by this author DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY, DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY is Editor of Political Science Quarterly, Research Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. This article was adapted from his just published PSQ eBook, Eight Presidential Elections, 1980–2008: Dealignments, Brittle Mandates, and Possible Majority Realignment (New York: The Academy of Political Science, 2009).Search for more papers by this author First published: 15 February 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2009.tb00654.xCitations: 3 AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume124, Issue3Fall 2009Pages 423-442 RelatedInformation

Europe's Structural Idol: An American Federalist Republic?

Journal Article Europe's Structural Idol: An American Federalist Republic? Get access Joseph M. Parent Joseph M. Parent JOSEPH M. PARENT is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Miami. Previously, he taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University. He publishes on American foreign policy, political integration, and international relations theory. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 124, Issue 3, Fall 2009, Pages 513–535, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2009.tb00658.x Published: 15 February 2013

Some Strategies for Left Feminists (and Their Male Allies) in the Age of Obama

The election of Barack Obama in November 2008 gave rise to passionate celebrations, at least in some parts of the country. Here is one account (by the President of Barnard College): Outside the gat...

Narcissistic Pathology: Empirical Approaches

CME Educational Objectives 1. Describe the historical context for development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- based narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. 2. Identify the empirical literature on the prevalence, comorbidity, subtypes, gender differences, and assessment procedures for narcissistic personality disorder. 3. Identify the treatment literature regarding narcissistic personality disorder.

Cerebral Dominance in Musicians and Nonmusicians

Cerebral Dominance in Musicians and Nonmusicians

Faith and the Modern Presidency: An Interview with Randall Balmer

Faith and the Modern Presidency:An Interview with Randall Balmer Randall J. Stephens Randall Balmer is professor of American Religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University. He has published a number of books and articles for the scholarly and popular press. An editor for Christianity Today, Balmer has written for the New York Times Syndicate, and has produced PBS documentaries on Billy Graham, creationism, and American evangelicalism. His three-part TV documentary, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, was nominated for an Emmy. In 2008 HarperOne published his God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. Historically Speaking editor Randall Stephens caught up with Balmer in Boston and discussed the 2008 presidential campaign and the lessons Americans can learn about faith and the presidency from the Kennedy era to the present. Randall Stephens: How much have your own religious views influenced what you write about? Randall Balmer: Coming right out of graduate school, I was more interested in trying to establish myself within the scholarly community, and so I took on more traditional sorts of projects. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Sub-culture in America (Oxford University Press, 1989) was a radical departure for me. I'm trained as a colonial historian. And I remember very clearly, for example, going to the chair of my department, and I said, "I have an idea for this fairly unconventional book. What do you think?" He said not to do it; it would be professional suicide. I decided I wanted to do it anyway, in part because it grew out of the crucible of my own experience. It turned out to be a reasonably successful book and PBS documentary. But it also turned out to be a very important book for me personally, in that it brought me back to the faith in ways that I had not anticipated when I first undertook the project. Since then, the books I've written have reflected my interests and my obsessions at various times. The last two books, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America (Basic Books, 2007), in particular, was in many ways motivated by a sense of utter despair at the 2004 elections. I woke up the day after the election with a hangover, and I hadn't been drinking. I had to figure out what I was going to do to change what I considered to be this country's perilous course. I don't flatter myself to think that I had any real role in changing things, but I like to think that I contributed or did my part. Stephens: You begin your God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush with an observation: "Americans were content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting in 1960, whereas by 2004 they had come to expect the candidates fully to disclose their religious views and to expound on their personal relationship with the Almighty." Could you say something about that process? Balmer:What I call the Kennedy paradigm of voter indifference toward a candidate's faith really prevailed through several election cycles up until 1976. Oddly enough, Richard Nixon reintroduced the language of faith and piety into presidential politics. I think it's impossible to imagine Jimmy Carter, the one-term governor of Georgia, emerging out of political anonymity to become first the Democratic nominee and then the president of the United States in 1976 had it not been for Nixon. And one of the reasons I find that so paradoxical is that Nixon was always Billy Graham's favorite politician and his lifelong friend. The culture of corruption surrounding the Nixon administration paradoxically reintroduced this language of faith and piety into presidential politics. Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, burst onto the scene saying that he wanted a government as good and decent as the American people. He promised never to knowingly lie to the American people. For a populace who had suffered through Richard Nixon's...

On Being Wrong

was early in the fall semester of 1985, and was lying in bed reading the New Yorker. During most of the 1980s ran the Women's Studies Program at Barnard College and taught there. But also taught on occasion in the graduate school at Columbia, where had studied French during the high theory days of the 1970s. had been leafing through the magazine on a Friday night trying to relax, my eye was caught by a story that began in the following way: It was easy to find an apartment in New Haven, even though my classes in feminist criticism were starting in just a few days and most of the other grad students had arrived at Yale the week before (Janowitz 30). Hey, elbowed my husband, who was reading on the other side of the bed. A story in the New Yorker by a woman writer about feminist criticism. sat bolt upright in amazement. Then feminist criticism disappeared for a while, until well into the third page of the story, the narrator, a young woman named Cora, after sup plying some family background for the reader (a dead sister, a father living in New Zealand), mentions that she had been accepted into the Women's Studies Program at Yale. was newly excited. But not, as it turned out, for long. I was sitting in class, taking notes as usual, the narrator complains about her seminar in feminist criticism, when it became apparent that not one word that was being said made the slightest bit of sense (32). More than twenty years after the fact, it's hard for me to slow down my initial reaction enough to replicate it here. confess that had been

Coming of age at Barnard, 1968

As part of the 40th anniversary commemorations of the 1968 student rebellion at Columbia University, Barnard College invited me to present the annual Virginia Gildersleeve Lecture on the subject “How did 1968 affect your life?” During that tumultuous year I was an undergraduate at Barnard, the women's college affiliated with Columbia and located just across Broadway on the Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Although I was only marginally involved in the protest that shut down the university, campus and national events of that year had a profound influence on me. Looking back on 1968, I can detect the seeds of both my political commitments and my subsequent career as an historian of women, feminism, and sexuality.

How the West Failed Georgia

Research Article| October 01 2008 How the West Failed Georgia Alexander Cooley Alexander Cooley Alexander Cooley is an associate professor at Barnard College and a member of the Study Group on US-Russia and Georgia Relations at Columbia University's Harriman Institute. He is the author of Base Politics: Democratic Change and the US Military Overseas (Cornell University Press, 2008). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (2008) 107 (711): 342–344. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2008.107.711.342 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Alexander Cooley; How the West Failed Georgia. Current History 1 October 2008; 107 (711): 342–344. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2008.107.711.342 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2008 Current History. All rights reserved.2008The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Future structural genomics initiatives: an interview with Helen Berman, director of the Protein Data Bank

Helen M. Berman (HMB, pictured) is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research area is structural biology and bioinformatics, with a special focus on protein–nucleic acid interactions. She is the founder of the Nucleic Acid Database, a repository of information about the structures of nucleic acid-containing molecules; and is the co-founder and Director of the Protein Data Bank, the international repository of the structures of biological macromolecules. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Biophysical Society, from which she received the Distinguished Service Award in 2000. A past president of the American Crystallographic Association, she is a recipient of the Buerger Award (2006). Dr. Berman received her A. B. in 1964 from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Pittsburgh.

God and Country: An Introduction

elizabeth a. castelli is Professor of Religion at Barnard College at Columbia University. She is the author, most recently, of Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (Columbia University Press, 2004), and the editor of the journal, Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, published by Equinox (uk).

Persecution Complexes: Identity Politics and the “War on Christians”

elizabeth a. castelli is Professor of Religion at Barnard College at Columbia University. She is the author, most recently, of Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (Columbia University Press, 2004), and the editor of the journal, Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, published by Equinox (uk).

Governing the American State: Congress and the New Federalism, 1877-1929. By Kimberley S. Johnson. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xii, 226 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-691-11974-8.)

Kimberly S. Johnson, a political scientist at Barnard College, Columbia University, offers a welcome reminder to historians of the modern United States: New Deal policy making was not a seamless transition to more centralized policy making in Washington. Rather, it was based on a federalist heritage of power sharing among the states and the national government that stretched back to the nineteenth century. While James Patterson, in his important book The New Deal and the States (1969), analyzed the 1930s and the consequences of New Deal policy on the states, Johnson focuses on the period before the 1930s and on congressional attempts to respond to national issues with mixed national-state policy solutions. She argues that the transition to the executive-directed national policy-making model Patterson identified for the 1930s originated in a nuanced balancing act shaped by Congress from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s. This book is generally a product of political science (it begins with a definition of the “new New Federalism,” followed by a chapter on context, three case-study chapters, and a conclusion), but it rests more on its historical case-study analyses than on pathbreaking political science technique. The notes are valuable reading in themselves, for they reflect an overview of federalism that includes contemporary sources and secondary analyses from the 1960s to recent times.

The Sexual Politics of the “New Abolitionism”

elizabeth bernstein is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and coeditor of Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity (Routledge, 2005).

David Brakke, . Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ix+308 pp. $49.95 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewDavid Brakke, . Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. ix+308 pp. $49.95 (cloth).Elizabeth A. CastelliElizabeth A. CastelliBarnard College at Columbia University. Search for more articles by this author Barnard College at Columbia University.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 87, Number 3July 2007 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/519876 Views: 29Total views on this site Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts and Case Studies. Edited by Charles W Fox and , Jason B Wolf. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. $109.50 (hardcover); $59.50 (paper). xvi + 592 p; ill.; index. ISBN: 0‐19‐516817‐8 (hc); 0‐19‐516818‐6 (pb). 2006.

Previous articleNext article No AccessEvolutionary Genetics: Concepts and Case Studies. Edited by Charles W Fox and , Jason B Wolf. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. $109.50 (hardcover); $59.50 (paper). xvi + 592 p; ill.; index. ISBN: 0‐19‐516817‐8 (hc); 0‐19‐516818‐6 (pb). 2006.Hilary CallahanHilary CallahanBiological Sciences, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, New York Search for more articles by this author Biological Sciences, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, New YorkPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 82, Number 2June 2007Contents Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/519584 Views: 19Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Rational Trust: An Interview with Onora O’Neill

Onora O’Neill was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1992 to 2006. She studied philosophy, psychology and physiology at Oxford and earned a PhD from Harvard, with John Rawls as supervisor. She taught at Barnard College, the women’s college at Columbia University, New York, before taking up a post at the University of Essex, where she became Professor of Philosophy in 1987. She lectures in the faculties of Philosophy and History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge, and has written widely on ethics and political philosophy, with particular interests in questions of international justice, and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.