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March 10 Fugitives & Matriarchs: Slavery in the Atlantic & Indian Ocean Worlds Gunja SenGupta, professor of history at Brooklyn College and the author of From Slavery to Poverty: The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840–1918, offered an intriguing transnational perspective on slavery by taking us from colonial India to the antebellum United States. The event included stories of both enslaved Virginians accompanying their masters to New York in the 1850s and East African captives traveling in the custody of traders through Indian princely states in the 1840s. Professor SenGupta also looked at white female champions of racial slavery in the American South and women constructed as slaveholding prostitutes in nineteenth-century India.
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1 Winners of Athena Awards stand with moderator Lynn Sherr and Athena Center director Kathryn Kolbert. From left: writer Anne Thompson; screenwriter Delia Ephron ’66; director/cinematographer/editor Chris Hegedus; producer Debra Martin Chase; executive director of Women Make Movies Debra Zimmerman; cinematographer Nancy Schreiber; director Tanya Hamilton; documentary director Gini Reticker; ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr; Vanity Fair contributing editor Leslie Bennetts; producer Abigail Disney; and Kathryn Kolbert 2 Actress/ producer Anishika Jontae, Noor Al-Husayni ’11, Angela Wong ’11, and Amy Zhong ’11 3 Julie Burton, president, Women’s Media Center and Jamia Wilson, vice president, programs, Women’s Media Center 4 Athena Awards 5 Co-founder of the Athena Film Festival and founder of Women and Hollywood Melissa Silverstein, writer/director Debra Granik, writer/producer Anne Rosellini, and Anne Thompson at the Q&A session after the screening of Winter’s Bone. 6 Tami Gold, director of Passionate Politics: The Life and Work of Charlotte Bunch, and Annette Insdorf, director of film studies, CU 7 Actress Greta Gerwig ’06 8 Artist Diane Stewart Love ’61, producer and Barnard trustee Dina De Luca ’82, and writer Penny Brandt Jackson ’83 9 Lynn Sherr and Delia Ephron 10 Athena Center leadership lecturer Raleigh Mayer and Alexandra Tyler, manager of Branded and Social Media Marketing 11 Diana Ritter, Mary Ann LoFrumento ’77, and Judith Low ’79 12 Kristina Catomeris with mom, Barnard President Debora Spar, and producer/director Regina Weinreich 13 Debra Martin Chase
April 11 TWILIGHT FACULTY LECTURE: Life in the Universe On April 11, Laura Kay, Barnard professor of astronomy, explored how astronomy is always changing as new discoveries are being made, and how “Life in the Universe” is being rethought as researchers discover numerous planets around other stars and search for life in the solar system. Professor Kay’s work is informed by her interdisciplinary experience as well as the sciences. She served as chair of Barnard’s women’s studies department from 2006-2009, and now is an Ann Whitney Olin Professor and chair of the department of physics and astronomy. April 13 Liberty in Mind: Women Philosophers from Margaret Cavendish to Mary Wollstonecraft This year’s Virginia C. Gildersleeve Lecture featured Sarah Hutton, who holds a chair in the English department at Aberystwyth University in Wales, U.K., and is visiting Barnard as a Gildersleeve Professor; she’s also the author of Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher. A pioneer in the study of early modern women philosophers and scientists, Hutton examined some of the ways in which Enlightenment and early modern women conceived of liberty and equality, especially the notion that to think is to be free. The event looked at the most famous early feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, who was the first to propose female autonomy in terms of rights. Before Wollstonecraft, women were no less concerned with issues of liberty and equality, but generally thought about them in different terms. Full calendar of events at barnard.edu/calendar.
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