The Barnard Center for Research on Women presents: The Elsewhere Is Black: Ecological Violence and Improvised Life, a reading and discussion featuring Marisa Solomon, J.T. Roane, Mon Mohapatra, and C. Riley Snorton. Co-Sponsors: The Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College
Join BCRW for an exciting book salon in celebration of Barnard Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Marisa Solomon’s The Elsewhere Is Black: Ecological Violence and Improvised Life with J.T. Roane (Geography, Rutgers) and Mon Mohapatra (Community Justice Exchange), moderated by C. Riley Snorton (English & Comparative Literature and ISSG, Columbia).
In The Elsewhere Is Black, Solomon examines how waste is a mundane part of poor Black survival and a condition of settler colonial racial capitalism. Tracing the flow of trash and waste across Black spaces, from Brooklyn’s historically Black Bedford-Stuyvesant to the post-plantation towns of Virginia’s Tidewater, Solomon contends that waste infrastructures concentrate environmental risk in an elsewhere that is routinely Black. She theorizes the relationship between the devaluation of land and Black and more-than-human life to reveal how the risks of poisoning, police violence, dispossession, and poverty hold Black life captive. Highlighting the creativity and resilience that emerge amid these conditions, Solomon, Roane, and Monhapatra will invite us to consider collaborative conversations across new eco-political possibilities that center the book’s fundamental ask: What forms of environmentalism arise when Black un/freedom has always been entangled with waste?
We’re Alone
Edwidge Danticat, in conversation with Brent Hayes Edwards
“Reading Edwidge Danticat’s We’re Alone is like sitting down to listen to an old friend …With clear, concise prose that delves into harsh topics without losing its sense of humor, Danticat once again proves that she is one of contemporary literature’s strongest, most graceful voices.” – NPR Book Reviews
Edwidge Danticat talks with Brent Hayes Edwards about We’re Alone, her recent book of essays that trace a loose arc from her childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, and include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin. The essays explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience, moving from the personal to the global and back again. Literature and art remain her reliable companions and guides through both tragedies and triumphs. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.
We’re Alone has garnered high critical praise and was a Finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle for Nonfiction, and named by NPR.org, Publishers Weekly, and Electric Literature Best Book of 2024.
Contact Information Maison Francaise 2128544482 fng2108@columbia.edu
Featuring: Lila Abu-Lughod, Zahra Ali, Sa’ed Atshan, Elizabeth Bernstein, Abigail Boggs, Judith Butler, Tina Campt, Elizabeth Castelli, Lisa Duggan, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jack Halberstam, Saidiya Hartman, Janet Jakobsen, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Temma Kaplan, Margot Kotler, Greta LaFleur, Sophie Lewis, Nick Mitchell, Manijeh Moradian, Amber Musser, Premilla Nadasen, Anupama Rao, Catherine Sameh, Evren Savci, C. Riley Snorton, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Catharine R. Stimpson, Neferti Tadiar, Maya Wind, Jacqueline Woodson, and more.
Friday, February 27, 2026, 10am – 7pm
& Saturday, February 28, 2026, 10am – 6:30pm
For half of a century, The Scholar and Feminist Conference has provided a mutually galvanizing space for scholars, activists, and artists to confront the most pressing issues at any given moment. Defining scholarship as for action from the very beginning, the conference has with unflagging regularity “met the moment” with intersectional feminist knowledge to inspire and build a robust response to contemporary crises. In many ways, the conference has grown up alongside academic feminism itself, yet, rather than uncritically mirror this history, it has consistently pushed back against feminism’s institutionalization. The conference highlights provocations, controversies, foundational gaps, and struggles that both cement its field-forming position and trouble a feminist progress narrative.
The conference’s history of meeting the moment with a vigorous feminist response provides a toolkit for understanding the present. This year, it asks: what are feminist responses to the global rise of authoritarianism and fascism, white Christian nationalism, ethnic cleansing and colonial violence, attacks on higher education and academic freedom, and assaults on queer and trans rights? Which practices of solidarity and feminist arts of transformation can mobilize resistance, provide sustenance, and produce social change? What can we learn from moments in our past, and how do they serve as a springboard for action today?
