CURRENT PROJECTS:

• Transnationalizing Justice

PAST PROJECTS:

• Feminisms and Global War

• Generations in Action

• Feminist Anger, Social Rage

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Transnationalizing Justice

As feminism has been integral to activist and human rights challenges to incarceration, so too has it aided in the development of international frameworks for justice that have expanded the domain of criminal law.  Transnationalizing Gender Justice stages a conversation between these two strains of feminism by bringing together scholars, activists, service providers and legal practitioners working in regions that have generated transnational conversations about the content and contours of justice to negotiate tensions between feminist challenges to the prison industrial complex and the necessity to address gender violence at an international level.

Through this rubric, we ask participants to explore these two vectors of social justice feminism – toward and away from punishment – with an emphasis on how globalizing justice surfaces claims to internationality and prevailing theories of the globalization of gendered and sexualized practices. 

Central questions for the conference include: Which types of individual and collective justice models are circulating within current international legal frameworks?  What are the ways in which these international legal frameworks (re)formulate our relationships to violence, justice, and each other?  How do the histories of academic and activist struggles bare upon the ideas and practices of gender justice?  What would it mean for a project of transnational justice for these groups to be accountable to one another? Would the representation of justice shift if academia, activist, policy frameworks responded to the collective needs and demands of these forms of organization? What areas of transnational justice remain unexplored or marginalized within current mobilizations of justice?  What ideas and practices can transnational feminist perspectives offer these unexplored questions within global frameworks?

PAST PROJECTS

Feminism and the Public Sphere (2003-6)

Dedicated to bridging academic and activist divides, the IAFR sponsors projects that are historical, international and interdisciplinary in their conception, and collaborative and experimental in their practices. Employing scholarly methodologies and activist strategies, participants address a range of intellectual and academic problems and engage current political debates, including those from which feminist critiques have been largely absent.

Three projects were developed within IAFR's focus on Feminism and the Public Sphere:

- Feminisms and Global War
- Generations in Action
- Feminist Anger, Social Rage


The Institute facilitates sustained conversations among individuals who do not ordinarily have the opportunity to brainstorm and to act in concert: scholars, artists, activists, journalists, and public intellectuals; people of different generations from diverse geographical areas; those who define themselves as feminists and those who do not. Out of these conversations will emerge new conceptual spaces, theoretical formulations and strategic interventions: written work of varying length - popular as well as academic, films and art shows, conferences and symposia, working groups and public policy collectives.

Chief among the Institute's projects will be the creation of residential groups that will focus on specific topics in seminars and workshops. To facilitate their activities, faculty will be given released time, graduate students will receive fellowships, and undergraduates will do internships - all on a rotating basis. Visiting scholars, journalists, activists and artists will be supported for weeks or months; some will have affiliations that last for as long as a year. Each research group will sponsor activities for the larger community and will maintain connections - nationally and internationally - with other, similar entities. Every group will choose the forms of its own productions and the kinds of social and political interventions that it wishes to make. It will also facilitate collaborations among visiting and local participants