Join the Middle East Institute, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and Asian Diaspora and Asian American Studies at Barnard for a book talk with Amy Malek, Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Studies, William & Mary. Moderated by Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Research Scholar, Columbia University.
Culture Beyond Country examines how Iranians in Los Angeles, Stockholm, and Toronto have strategically mobilized culture to assert belonging within the multicultural frameworks of their diaspora homes. By highlighting the tensions between cultural visibility and political marginalization, Culture Beyond Country brings a critical lens to immigrant integration and advances new ways of thinking about citizenship in an era of neoliberal multiculturalism.
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdV3kj4Q2CFnxAFqhLrItEaj1SAUDwhLamMO_8zk6vdyJ40xg/viewform
For the Helen Pond McIntyre ‘48 Lecture, Tourmaline will discuss her new biography of Marsha P. Johnson, followed by conversation with Professor C. Riley Snorton. Finding creative guidance in the archive, they will explore the power of Johnson’s life as a blueprint for living today and the continued struggle for queer and trans liberation.
Tourmaline’s new book, MARSHA: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson (Penguin Random House, 2025), is the first definitive biography of the Black trans activist and icon. Richly researched and vividly written with extensive access to Marsha’s friends and family, this book brings to light her legacy and unwavering commitment to the fight for queer and trans liberation. It was named a National Bestseller, received a Starred Review by Publishers Weekly, and was selected by The New York Times for inclusion in the Nonfiction Spring Book Preview. Tourmaline is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist who has spent two decades studying, preserving, and celebrating Johnson’s life.
This event is part of a series, “We Will Not Be Erased: Queer Archives, Trans Histories,” that will continue with a conversation between Tourmaline and Steven Watson—creator of Artifacts, a platform dedicated to preserving rare archival footage of queer and trans cultural pioneers—on November 19.
This event is free and open to the public with live ASL interpretation provided by Brandon Kazen-Maddox of Body Language Productions and DB-TIP (DeafBlind Training, Interpreting and Professional Development). Registration is required. BCRW will provide free copies of MARSHA to the first 140 students who register.
Dr. Omer Bartov, Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, will be giving a lecture titled, “Israel: What Went Wrong?” on Tuesday, November 11th from 7-8:30PM in Avery Hall’s Wood Auditorium. This lecture is open to CU/BC affiliates (students, faculty, staff, and alumni).
Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American scholar and Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written widely on war crimes, interethnic relations, and genocide. Recent books, published in multiple languages, include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), which won the National Jewish Book Award, and Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023), named Choice 2024 Outstanding Academic Title. Bartov’s essays and commentaries have been widely featured in national and international magazines and media outlets. His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, will be published in April 2026 by FSG in the US and Penguin/Random Books in the UK.
Organized by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race in partnership with the Department of History, Columbia GSAPP, and the European Institute.
“Black Europe: A Field on the Move” is a one-day, interdisciplinary graduate student conference open to the entire Columbia community and members of the public. Scholars across disciplines are increasingly treating “Black Europe” as a pertinent object of study. Yet much disagreement remains on what “Black Europe” is. Does Black Europe describe a place, an identity, an aspiration, or something else? Scholars oscillate between terms such as “Afropean,” “African-European,” and “Black European.” Moreover, the institutionalization of Black European studies remains a work in progress, and views vary on whether Black European studies is an academic field, a subsection of Black Studies or African Diaspora Studies, or a reference point for a set of inquiries and practices that exceed the bounds of academic discipline. See the attached flyer and registration link for panel details.
The conference is free to attend but registration is required. Questions for the organizers? Reach us at blackeurope2025@gmail.com
Organizers: Rochelle Malcolm (PhD candidate, History), Mayaki Kimba (PhD candidate, Political Science), and Zarino Lanni (PhD student, Anthropology)
Sponsors: Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Arts and Sciences Graduate Council, European Institute, Department of Political Science, Department of Africana Studies (Barnard College), Department of Anthropology, Department of History, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Department of French, Small Axe Project, Department of Germanic Languages
Respondents: Sonali Thakkar and Jack Halberstam
Please join the University Seminar on Cultural Memory for a discussion with David L. Eng (University of Pennsylvania) about Reparations and the Human (2025). Eng’s new book investigates a history of reparations across the Transpacific. He analyzes how concepts of reparation established during colonial settlement and the European Enlightenment shape contemporary configurations of the human and human rights, determining who can be recognized as victims, who must be seen as perpetrators, and who deserves repair. As demands for reparations now occupy center stage in debates concerning unresolved legacies of dispossession and Transatlantic slavery, Eng considers how the Cold War Transpacific provides a limit case for the politics of repair and definitions of the human.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Please register for the event here.
