About Our Digital Displays
Libraries regularly use book displays to highlight titles in their collection, feature resources on particular subjects, invite deeper exploration of timely issues, and to foster dialogue around issues and ideas. Our digital displays are an extension of this tradition.
The books - and zines and other resources - in our collection grow out of the intellectual life at Barnard and they are a part of the many, ongoing conversations that have spanned generations here. Our displays highlight material that has been collected with great intention for many years by putting books in dialogue with one another and with our community.
We plan to highlight a wide range of topics, but always with a focus on justice and equity. We aim to put up a new display approximately every month. No single exhibit is intended to represent the breadth of perspectives on a given topic, but instead to highlight a sample of the material in our collection. Over time, BLAIS aims to reflect diverse points of view and many avenues of scholarly inquiry.
We intend to continue with a rotating display program for the foreseeable future. To select topics and specific works, we collaborate with campus partners, students, faculty, and staff in BLAIS and the Milstein Academic Centers.
Current Display: Eco-Poetics
Highlighting works on the topics of community science, environmental justice, and the inherent poetry of the natural world.
Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science
An Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn’t working–and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices.
Examines the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and promotes awareness of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people -- especially those most often unheard.
This anthology considers how the rise of transdisciplinary practices in the postwar era allowed for new kinds of artistic engagement with nature
The New Farmer's Almanac Volume VI: Adjustments and Accommodations
seeks to recognize our own collective agency in the face of sizable uncertainties. The morphing climate, ongoing culture of land dispossession, continuing global pandemic, shifting and intensifying weather patterns, and migrations of all species—spurned by political and environmental upheaval—are considered.
Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West
Lucy Liippard now turns her keen eye to the politics of land use and art in an evolving New West. Working from her own lived experience in a New Mexico village and inspired by gravel pits in the landscape, Lippard weaves a number of fascinating themes--among them fracking, mining, land art, adobe buildings, ruins, Indian land rights, the Old West, tourism, photography, and water--into a tapestry that illuminates the relationship between culture and the land.
Fen, Bog and Swamp A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx--whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth--comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet.
Milkweed Smithereens gathers lively, wickedly smart, intimate, and indelible Bernadette Mayer poems: the volume ranges from brand-new nature poems, pastiches, sequences, epigrams, and excerpts from her Covid Diary and Second World of Nature to early poems and sonnets found in the attic or rooted out in the UC San Diego archive
In Plastic: An Autobiography, Cobb's obsession with a large plastic car part leads her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposes the interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies, and racism. Using a series of interwoven narratives--from ancient Phoenicia to Alabama--the book bears witness to our deepest entanglements and asks how humans continue on this planet.
Habitat Threshold begins with the birth and growth of the author's daughter and captures her childlike awe at the wondrous planet. As the book progresses, however, Perez confronts the impacts of environmental injustice, global capitalism, toxic waste, animal extinctions, water struggles, human violence, mass migration, and climate change.
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s chapbook Plant Thought is illustrated by Kiki Smith, designed by Richard Tuttle, and printed by Sarah Moody in honor of the poet’s participation in the 2022 Annual Chapbook Reading at Center for Book Arts on November 10, 2022.
This study shows the local history of two rural communities in New Mexico and how they were touched by the national discourse on the nuclear industrial complex from the spectrum of environmental racism and American exceptionalism.
Cloudwatch (Augusta Chapman, ‘18)
Cloudwatch is an art booklet centered on the question: what's at the overlap of human and nature? Developed over the course of a year, Cloudwatch combines sketches, artworks, photographs, and ephemera on the theme of ecology. It is also a process document which tracks the artist's attempt to develop a deeper awareness of climate, both as a destructive force and as a site of awe or pleasure. The majority of the work is place-based and was produced in California and Washington.
Butler's Warning : Our Health in a Changing Climate
In this cut and paste and partially handwritten zine, Barnard first year Alekya Maram researches the question: "How are cells affected by exposure to particulate matter?" Maram tackles this question from her work at the Ayata Lab to find an answer that lies at the intersection of neurology, immunology, and cellular and molecular biology. --Grace Li
A passionate celebration of cephalopods in all their plurality and finery and a collection of poems exploring human identity and experience through the lens of these marine animals. Through experimental takes on traditional poetic forms such as ghazals, tankas and cinquains, as well as more contemporary forms, Rasiqra Revulva delves into ecopoetics and marine biology, creating unique and beautifully composed poems.
Tiger Work: Poems, Stories, and Essays About Climate Change
In this poignant, timely collection, the renowned Booker Prize-winning author evokes the magic of nature and the urgency of protecting our environment. Twenty thousand years after a catastrophe wiped out the human race, visitors uncover their final messages scattered across the planet, in flooded cities and disintegrating books. These writings reveal the tragedies of people who continued to live as they always did-fearfully, selfishly-even as the end of their world loomed.
The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth
One-part visionary platform, one-part practical toolkit, the Red Deal is a platform that encompasses everyone, including non-Indigenous comrades and relatives who live on Indigenous land. We--Indigenous, Black and people of color, women and trans folks, migrants, and working people--did not create this disaster, but we have inherited it.
Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors
A stunning collection of original short stories in which writers from many different backgrounds envision a radically different climate future. Inspired by cutting-edge literary movements, such as Afrofuturism, hopepunk, and solarpunk, Afterglow imagines intersectional worlds in which no one is left behind—where humanity prioritizes equitable climate solutions and continued service to one’s community. Whether through abundance or adaptation, reform, or a new understanding of survival, these stories offer flickers of hope, even joy, as they
Past Displays
19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, by Naomi Shihab Nye (Harper Tempest, 2002, 2005): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, by Edward Said with photographs by Jean Mohr (Columbia University Press, 1999): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
Architecture after Revolution, by the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency: Sandi Hillal, Alessandro Petti, and Eyal Weizman (Sternberg Press, 2013): Library access in print
The Arsonists' City, by Hala Alyan (Houghton Mifflin, 2021): Library access in print and online
Baddawi, by Leila Abdelrazaq (Just World Books, 2015): Library access in print
Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the US "War on Terror", edited by Tikva Honig-Parnass & Toufic Haddad (Haymarket Books, 2007): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
Birthright: Poems, by George Abraham (Button Poetry & Exploding Pinecone Press, 2020): Library access in print
Born Palestinian, Born Black, by Suheir Hammad (UpSet Press, 2010): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel, edited by Rhoda Ann Khanaaneh and Isis Nusair (State University of New York Press, 2010): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite and online
Drops of This Story, by Suheir Hammad (Writers and Readers Publishers, 1996): Library access in print
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems, by Naomi Shihab Nye (HarperCollins: Greenwillow Books, 2020): Library access in print
Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, by Nadia Abu El-Haj (University of Chicago Press, 2001): Library access in print and online
Faithful Witnesses: Palestinian Children Recreate Their World, Kamal Boullata (Olive Branch Press, 1990): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
The Fig Tree, by Leila Abdelrazaq (Zine published in 2018): Library access in print
Five Broken Cameras, by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi (Film, Kino Lorber, 2013): Library access in DVD
Golda Slept Here, by Suad Amiry (Bloomsbury, 2014): Library access in print
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi (Metropolitan Books, 2020): Library access in print
In the Presence of Absence, by Mahmoud Darwish (Archipelago Books, 2011): Library access in Arabic in print and in English in print-local and in print-offsite
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat (Stanford, 2019): Library access in print and online
Lifta, Volume 1: Future Palestine, by Various Authors (Lifta Volumes, 2020): Library access in print
A Map of Home: a novel, by Randa Jarrar (Penguin, 2009): Library access in print and online
Men in the Sun & Other Palestinian Stories, by Ghassan Kanafani, translated from Arabic by Hilary Kilpatrick (Lynne Rienner, 1999, originally 1962): Library access in Arabic in print and in English in print
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (New Directions, 2020): Library access in Arabic in print-local and print-offsite and in English in print
Miral by Rula Jebreal, translated from Italian by John Cullen (Penguin, 2010): Library access in print
No Snow Here, by Nadia Abou-Karr (Zine published from 2001-): Library access in print
Orientalism, by Edward Said (Vintage Books, 1994): Library access in print and online
Palestine: Illustrated Political History, prepared and designed by Ismail Shammout, translated by Abdul-Qader Daher (Cultural Arts Section, Department of Information and National Guidance, Palestinian Liberation Organization, 1972): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, by Raja Shehadeh (Scribner, 2008): Library access in print-local and in print-offsite
Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank, edited by Suha Sabbagh (Indiana University Press, 1998): Library access in print and online
“The Palestinian Women’s Autonomous Movement: Emergence, Dynamics, and Challenges”, by Rabab Abdulhadi (Gender and Society 12.6: 1998, 649-673): Library access in print (request a scan) or online
The Parisian, by Isabella Hammad (Grove, 2019): Library access in print
Refugee Heritage, by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti with photographs by Luca Capuano (Art and Theory, 2021): Library access in print
Rifqa: poetry, by Mohammed El-Kurd (Haymarket Books, 2021): Library access in print and online
Salt Houses: a novel, by Hala Alyan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018): Library access in print (2018) and in print (2017)
Sebastia by Dima Srouji (Film, 2020): Access available online
The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist, by Emile Habiby, translated by Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick (Interlink, 2002, originally 1974): Library access in print
Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries by Suad Amiry (Pantheon, 2004): Library access in print
Smuggling Books Across the Border: An Illustrated Diary, by Leila Abdelrazaq (Zine published in 2015): Library access in print
Speed Sisters, directed by Amber Fares (Film, First Run Features, 2016): Library access in DVD
Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora, by Wafa Ghnaim (Self-Published in Brooklyn, 2018): Library access in print
A Theory of Birds: poems, by Zaina Alsous (University of Arkansas Press, 2019): Library access in print and online
Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth after 9/11, by Thea Abu El-Haj (University of Chicago Press, 2015): Library access in print and online
We Won't Be Silent: Palestinian Young Women and Girls Speak, edited by Shireen AbuKhiran, Lubna Alzaroo, and Hannah Mermelstein (Zine published in 2008): Library access in print
You Exist Too Much: a novel, by Zaina Arafat (Catapult, 2020): Library access in print and online
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, Edited by Joshua Whitehead, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021
Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory, Qwo-Li Driskill. University of Arizona Press, 2016
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, C. Riley Snorton. University of Minnesota Press, 2017
Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique, Jackie Cuevas. Rutgers University Press, 2018
Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam, Duke University Press, 1998
Females, by Andrea Long Chu, Verso, 2019
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Eli Clare, Duke University Press, 2017
Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through, T. Fleischmann, Coffee House Press, 2019
Homeward Bound and Other Stories, Gillian Ybabez, Trans Women Writers Collective, 2018
Shortandqueer, Zine by Kelly Shortandqueer, Denver, Colorado, 2004-
Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon, Penguin, 2020
Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Celadon Books, 2020
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, Akwaeke Emezi, Riverhead Books, 2021
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir, Kai Cheng Thom, Metonymy Press, 2016
Freshwater: a novel, Akwaeke Emezi, Grove Press, 2018
Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon, Penguin, 2020
Gendercide 3.1: The Chemical Warfare Issue, Zine by Ashley Altadonna, 2007
The Transfeminist Manifesto: And Other Essays on Transfeminism, Zine by Emi Koyama, 1999
Just So You Know: autobiographical comics, Zines by Joey Alison Sayers, Berkeley, 2009-
Yes You Are Trans Enough: My Transition from Self-Loathing to Self-Love, Mia Violet. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity during This Crisis (and the Next), Dean Spade '97, Verso, 2020
The Thirty Names of Night: a novel, Zeyn Joukhadar, Atria Books, 2020
Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Edited by Lexie Bean, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018
Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg, Firebrand Books, 2003 / Self-Published Open Access, 2014
Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, Paul B. Preciado, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013
Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies, Francisco J. Galarte, University of Texas Press, 2021
The Subtweet, Vivek Shraya, ECW Press, 2020
System of Satellites: poems, Như Xuân Nguyễn, Poetry Society of America, 2020 (limited run, no copies available, request through ILL - link)
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, Edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, Nightboat Books, 2020
Transgender Studies Quarterly - TSQ, Co-Edited by Francisco J. Galarte, Susan Stryker, Abraham Weil, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Grace Lavery, Published by Duke University Press. 2014-present
Black Trans Prayer Book, Co-Edited by J. Mase III and Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi. Self-Published, 2020
By Kayla Leong, The Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP)
For Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Month, the Center for Engaged Pedagogy looked to books on Indigenous pedagogy to inform our practice and the ways we all relate to teaching and learning.
Most of these titles are available at the Barnard Library. We also encourage you to explore the unique pedagogy book collection at the CEP (located in Milstein 126)
- Sandy Grande (ed.), Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought and in CLIO (2004/2015)
"and beyond academic settings, they also acknowledge and draw attention to the incommensurability between decolonization and aspects of social justice projects in education. By addressing this tension ethically and deliberately, the contributors engage thoughtfully with decolonization and make a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education."
- Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong (eds.), Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization and in CLIO
“This ground-breaking text explores the intersection between dominant modes of critical educational theory and the socio-political landscape of American Indian education…While the author acknowledges the dire need for practical-community based research, she maintains that the global encroachment on Indigenous lands, resources, cultures and communities points to the equally urgent need to develop transcendent theories of decolonization and to build broad-based coalitions.”
- Leigh Patel, No Study Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education (2021)
“Using campus social justice movements as an entry point, Leigh Patel shows how the struggles in higher education often directly challenged the tension between narratives of education as a pathway to improvement and the structural reality of settler colonialism that creates and protects wealth for a select few. Through original research and interviews with activists and organizers from Black Lives Matter, The Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Combahee River Collective, and the Young Lords, Patel argues that the struggle on campuses reflect a starting point for higher education to confront settler strategies...”
- Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang (eds.), Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education and in CLIO
“Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives on education have long persisted alongside colonial models of education, yet too often have been subsumed within the fields of multiculturalism, critical race theory, and progressive education. Timely and compelling, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education features research, theory, and dynamic foundational readings for educators and educational researchers who are looking for possibilities beyond the limits of liberal democratic schooling...”
- Mishuana Goeman, Mark my words : native women mapping our nations and in CLIO
"Mark My Words traces settler colonialism as an enduring form of gendered spatial violence, demonstrating how it persists in the contemporary context of neoliberal globalization. In a strong and lucid voice, Mishuana Goeman provides close readings of literary texts, arguing that it is vital to refocus the efforts of Native nations beyond replicating settler models of territory, jurisdiction, and race.”
Data Justice
- Algorithms of Oppression: how search engines reinforce racism by Safiya Umoja Noble. Published New York: New York University Press, [2018]. Find the print book in or the ebook in CLIO
- Automating Inequality: how high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor by Virginia Eubanks. First Picador Edition: August 2019, find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- Discriminating Data: correlation, neighborhoods, and the new politics of recognition by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun; mathematical illustrations by Alex Barnett. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, [2021]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- Invisible Women: data bias in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez. New York: Abrams Press, [2019]
- Coded Bias Directed by Shalini Kantayya [United States]: Women Make Movies [2020]. access online via CLIO
- Diagrams of Power: Visualizing, mapping, and performing resistance edited by Patricio Dávila. [Eindhoven]: Onomatopee, [2019] Find the print book in CLIO
- W.E.B. Du Bois's data Portraits: Visualizing Black America : the color line at the turn of the twentieth century Edited by Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert, editors. Hudson, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, [2018]. Find the print book in CLIO
- Data Action: Using data for public good by Sarah Williams. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, [2020]. Find print book in CLIO
- Decolonizing Data: Unsettling conversations about social research methods by Jacqueline M. Quinless. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, [2022]. Find the print book in CLIO
- Lives of Data: Essays on computational cultures from India edited by Sandeep Mertia; foreword by Ravi Sundaram. [Amsterdam]: Institute of Network Cultures, [2020]. Find the ebook in CLIO
- Opening Data zine. Find the zine in the Digital Humanities Center, or download edition 1 and edition 2
- A Comix About Data, Targeted Ads on Facebook, and Trauma by Michelle. [Brooklyn, New York]: the author, February 2019. Find the zine in CLIO
- How Did We Get Here: A Zine About Privacy and the Library by the Data Privacy Project: Seeta Pena Gangadharan, Melissa Morrone, Bonnie Tijerina, Davis Erin Anderson, and others. Design by Abigail Miller. [Brooklyn, NY] Data Privacy Project, 2018. Find the zine in CLIO
- All Data are Local: Thinking critically in a data-driven society by Yanni Alexander Loukissas; foreword by Geoffrey C. Bowker. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, [2019]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- Data Justice and the Right to the City edited by Morgan Currie, Jeremy Knox and Callum McGregor. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, [2022]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- Data Politics: Worlds, subjects, rights edited by Didier Bigo, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge [2019]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies: The ambivalences of data power edited by Andreas Hepp, Juliane Jarke, Leif Kramp, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, [2022] Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, [2020]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO
- The Costs of Connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, [2019]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO.
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power by Shoshana Zuboff. New York: PublicAffairs, [2019]. Find the print book or the ebook in CLIO