40 Years of BCRW
1 media/40years_thumb.jpg 2021-06-14T13:23:01-07:00 Barnard Center for Research on Women e728c2e48199e06d02f4b76fea1c61c9a84bc611 38483 1 The front cover of the program for the conference celebrating 40 years of BCRW, in 2011. plain 2021-06-14T13:23:01-07:00 Barnard Center for Research on Women e728c2e48199e06d02f4b76fea1c61c9a84bc611This page is referenced by:
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BCRW at 50
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Academic Feminism
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2021-06-14T13:30:49-07:00
Fifty years after its founding, BCRW remains a space of creation, activism, and collaboration. Working together across time and space, BCRW community members have continued to create projects and materials that are larger than the sum of their parts. The webjournal Scholar and Feminist Online, begun in 2003, is a shining example, as is the Center’s signature Scholar and Feminist conference. Since its founding, BCRW has always been forward-looking, scanning the horizon for new opportunities for coalition and intervention: For instance, at the Scholar and the Feminist XIV (“Women in the 21st Century: Looking Forward and Looking Back”) Beverly Guy-Sheftall led a workshop under the banner of "The Future of Feminism in the Black Community" in which she called for the “identification of different experiences (ex: class, gender, etc.) within the Black community [and talked] about how elitism plays a role in access to academic conversations like those being held at th[at] conference.”
Revisiting the past 50 years of BCRW’s history has made clear the gains made in the struggle for gender justice, but it has also been a reminder of the Center’s founding commitments to community, knowledge production, and equity. The centrality of community at BCRW has also long been one of its greatest strengths: A 1974 article in the Barnard Bulletin extensively quotes BCRW Advisory Board member Sue Sacks, then an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Education and Coordinator of an early Scholar and Feminist Conference. On planning the conference, Sacks is quoted as saying “We want to emphasize the participatory aspect of the conference...We don’t want it to be simply a presentation of papers.” Many years later, Sue Sacks continues to be a committed and vital member of BCRW’s Advisory Board. One final note about the relationship between change and continuity at BCRW: A 1982 pamphlet on the Birdie Goldsmith Ast Collection notes that “the heart of the Resource Collection is its vertical file material. Rows of green file boxes containing more than 5,000 journal articles, reports, newspaper and magazine clippings, fact sheets, pamphlets, conference proceedings, unpublished papers, manuscripts, and government documents line the library shelves.” Visitors to BCRW will be familiar with the well-loved “rows of green boxes” that adorned the Center’s shelves for decades. Regarding use of this collection, the pamphlet notes that “the Collection is housed in a pleasant room in the Women’s Center, located in Room 101, Barnard Hall.” After many wonderful years, BCRW relocated in 2018 from that “pleasant room” in 101 Barnard Hall and now occupies the entire sixth floor of the newly-built Milstein Center. This increased square footage has allowed BCRW to offer space to activists, scholars, and artists through the Social Justice Institute, to create dedicated space for research assistants, to expand programming within the Center—and, as always, to build community.
