(Left) President Bollinger, CCASD Interim Director Jean Howard, Professor Marianne Hirsch and Professor Lila Abu-Lughod

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: John Tucker, 212-854-6164, jht2112@columbia.edu

Study of Inequality and Social Difference to Be Focus of New Center at Columbia

Interdisciplinary center will bring together scholars and artists from across the university and around the world NEW YORK, April 12, 2008 — Columbia University has launched the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference (CCASD), which will bring together scholars of race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in order to investigate problems of social and cultural inequality and to promote innovative interdisciplinary scholarship. With a team of visiting fellows and multiyear academic initiatives already in place, the Center will serve as a major research arm of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia, as well as the Barnard Center for Research on Women. “We think it’s crucial to address the intersections among race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity because these structures do not exist in isolation,” said Interim Director Jean Howard, the George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities and former vice provost for diversity initiatives. “It is impossible to analyze the global dynamics of gender and sexuality, for example, without accounting for the impact of colonialism, migration and market forces, or to analyze the global dynamics of race and ethnicity without reaching into the history of the struggles over population control, sexual rights and reproduction,” added Claudio Lomnitz, Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and CCASD Faculty Fellow. The Center has already begun forming research partnerships with universities across the world, including Sabanci University, in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. "There is nothing that more defines, I think, the last half-century than trying to deal with issues of gender and race, ethnicity and difference," said Lee C. Bollinger, University president, during his opening remarks at the Center’s launch event, held earlier this month. "I am really proud to have this happen at Columbia,” he later added. CCASD’s interdisciplinary approach will cut across the fields of humanities, law, social science and the arts. Several prominent artists will join the center as visiting fellows next year, including Clive van den Berg, an esteemed designer and curator from South Africa, and the award-winning photographer Susan Meiselas. “It’s impossible to understand political, economic and legal transformation without considering the emergence and movement of cultural and aesthetic forms,” said Laura Ciolkowski, the Center’s assistant director and an adjunct assistant professor in Columbia’s English department. CCASD currently has four multiyear research projects scheduled and will add another next year. Its inaugural project examines the archive, cultural memory and the ways various cultures approach the transmission of their heritage. Other projects include an exploration of the intellectual history of black women; a comparative study of the relationship between national borders and social boundaries (with special focus on France, the Middle East, the United States, Mexico and Central America); and an international study of liberalism and the impacts of legal, economic, political and medical reform on women, the poor and racial, ethnic and sexual minorities. The Center’s launch was announced during a two-day symposium entitled “Rites of Return” that featured prominent scholars, artists and cultural critics, including New Orleans photographers Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, novelist Eva Hoffman, and Israeli journalist Amira Hass.

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