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Barnard
Launches New Web Journal, Scholar and Feminist Online
As
academics look for new ways to use the Internet for scholarship
and to reach wider audiences, the Center for Research on
Women at Barnard College on Wednesday, Jan. 29, launched
the first online-only women's studies journal, which combines
research and commentary and makes the Center's intellectual,
artistic and social action programs widely available.
This new breed of web journal, The Scholar & Feminist
Online, is zine-like in format with a multi-media approach.
(Click here
to view the journal.)
The web site features a special issue on the continued and
far-reaching impact of the work of Margaret Mead, where
users can view film clips from a discussion of the subject.
An issue on family photography and American Jewish identity
gives users immediate access to original art installations
as well as specially commissioned photo essays. Future issues
will include discussion boards, extensive bibliographies
and links, and scheduled live chats between students and
selected contributors.
S&F Online makes its debut at an institution with a
longstanding tradition of scholarly innovation. The Barnard
Center for Research on Women was founded in 1971 as one
of the first feminist research institutes and is home to
the nationally recognized Scholar & the Feminist Conference.
In the 1980s, two much-celebrated anthologies, The Future
of Difference (1981) and Pleasure and Danger
(1982), were based on this conference. S&F Online continues
the transformation of live event to publication, shepherding
the conference-and its progeny-into the digital age.
Designed and managed by a crew of third-wave feminists in
tune with technology, S&F Online transforms the eponymous
conference as well as the Center's other popular programs
into a living archive through written transcripts, audio
and video clips, additional materials provided by participants,
as well as new scholarly work and links to intellectual,
artistic and social action networks. All contributions include
hypertext, creating a digital conversation that expands
on the original live interactions among program participants.
"Unlike the earlier digital conversion of scholarly
journals, or the rote posting of conference papers, S&F
Online takes full advantage of its online environment,"
says Editor Deborah Siegel.
Increasing access to New York City-based cultural programming
that spans boundaries of discipline, politics, and artistic
medium, S&F Online is free to scholars, artists, students
and the general public. "Not only will this project
create a valuable archive of the Center's best programming,
it will allow Barnard College to include a wider audience
in the dialogues initiated by these often groundbreaking
forums," says Janet Jakobsen, director of the Center.
After the initial three-issue launch, the Center will publish
S&F Online twice a year, and, in the fall, will offer
an issue featuring Anna Deavere Smith's conversation with
Ann Pelligrini, associate professor of drama at the University
of California, Irvine, from the 2002 Scholar & Feminist
Conference. A marriage of art, criticism, activism, and
technology, the journal is an innovative adaptation of scholarship
in the Internet age.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, (212) 854-7583, or strimel@barnard.edu
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