IRWaG Wins Prestigious Award

In its award notice, the NCRW recognized the new and creative directions at IRWAG including a substantial growth in faculty and intellectual scope; the dynamic leadership its members have provided to the wider university; and its instrumental role in the foundation of a uniquely collaborative advanced study center, the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference. The NCRW noted that by building on a strong foundation of faculty and student commitment, as well as institutional support from the highest levels of the administration, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender has transformed itself in the past five years. It has appointed four distinguished scholars with joint positions in the Institute and several departments in the Humanities and Social Sciences, to bring the permanent faculty to six. Faculty associated with the Institute have taken leadership roles across the university, including in Columbia's successful Diversity Initiative. The Institute's most significant achievement is its contribution to a collaborative effort to establish the new Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference (www.socialdifference.org <http://www.socialdifference.org/> ). This center for advanced study, launched in spring 2008, was conceived in a historic partnership with four other Centers and Institutes at Columbia to promote interdisciplinary scholarship on the global dimensions of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity.

 

As Director of IRWaG, I would like to thank the labor of the executive committees of the other Centers and Institutes that make up CCASD which worked tirelessly to establish the CCASD: The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Institute for Research on African American Studies, and Barnard Center for Research on Women. And I would like to thank the previous and current Directors of CCASD: Jean Howard, Neferti Tadiar, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Marianne Hirsch.