BCRW: The Barnard Center for Research on Women

About the Contributors

Anne Aghion is an Emmy Award winner and recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a documentary filmmaker and and producer who has worked for The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Her two documentaries on post-genocide Rwanda—In Rwanda We Say . . . The Family That Does Not Speak Dies, and Gacaca, Living Together Again in Rwanda?—have received considerable recognition and are frequently used by non-profit organizations for educational and training purposes. Her most recent documentary, Ice People, follows geologists from North Dakota State University as they search for fossils in Antarctica. Aghion graduated from Barnard College Magna Cum Laude in 1982.

Subhankar Banerjee, an Indian-born artist-activist, uses photography to raise awareness about issues that threaten the environment. Since 2000, he has focused his activist efforts on the rights of indigenous peoples and land conservation issues in the Arctic. His Arctic photographs have been shown in nearly forty group and solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including a solo exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2009, his photographs will be featured in the group exhibition IMPACT: Living in the Age of Climate Change that will open in Copenhagen at the Staten Museum for Kunst (the Danish National Gallery of Art) and will travel to Iceland, Sweden, and Norway in 2010. Banerjee received an inaugural Greenleaf Artist Award from the United Nations Environmental Programme and an inaugural Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. In Fall 2008, he is a visiting artist at F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) at Arizona State University in Phoenix and a visiting scholar at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. In Winter 2009 he will be artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College in Hanover. For more information, visit www.subhankarbanerjee.org.

Lisa Bloom is a visiting professor at the University of California at San Diego. She is the author of Gender on Ice (1993), an examination of the relationships between gender, nationalism, technology, and travel. She is also interested in the intersection of feminist theory and visual culture. Her more recent publications include the edited volume With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture (University of Minnesota, 1999) and Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art (Routledge, 2006).

Joyce Campbell is an interdisciplinary artist working in photography, sculpture, film, and video installation. In 2006, she traveled to the Ross Sea region of Antarctica with the Artists to Antarctica program sponsored by Creative New Zealand and Antarctica New Zealand. Based in Los Angeles, California and Auckland, New Zealand, Campbell is a lecturer at the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts.

Chris Cuomo is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing (1998) and The Philosopher Queen: Feminist Essays on War, Love, and Knowledge (2003), and co-editor of The Feminist Philosophy Reader (2007). Her current projects are on climate change and environmental ethics, critical American philosophy, and political performance art.

Wendy Eisner, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Cincinnati, is a physical geographer, environmental scientist, and archaeologist trained in America and Europe. Her main geographical interest is the Arctic: Alaska, Siberia, and Greenland. She is also a pollen analyst, or "palynologist" and she identifies and interprets fossil pollen from ancient sediments (lakes and peats) in order to reconstruct past vegetation and climate. She has a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, an MA in Social Anthropology from University of Leiden, a Drs in Archaeology from the University of Amsterdam, and a PhD in Physical Geography from the University of Utrecht. She also studies indigenous knowledge as it relates to climatic and environmental change in the Arctic. Her current project is conducted with Alaskan Native elders to incorporate their perceptions and understanding of their environment in order to improve our scientific knowledge of the Arctic region.

Dr. Elena Glasberg is an essayist and speaker interested in Antarctica and questions of nation, literature, and science, as well as how people relate to place and territory. She earned her BA in English with honors from SUNY Purchase in 1981 and went on to earn her PhD in American Studies from Indiana University in 1995. She is currently a faculty member in the Writing Program at Princeton University.

Sherrill Grace is Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and winner of the prestigious 2008 Canada Council Killam Prize in Humanities. She has published over 200 articles, chapters and reviews, and 20 books, including Canada and the Idea of North, Inventing Tom Thomson, and the new edition of A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador. Her most recent book is the biography of contemporary playwright Sharon Pollock, Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock (Talonbooks, 2008). She is currently conducting research on Canadian representations of World Wars I and II.

Barbara Hillary, a native New Yorker, spent her early life as a nurse and community activist. After retiring and later successfully battling lung cancer, Hillary spent her time snowmobiling and dog sledding. Upon learning that no African-American woman had ever reached the North Pole, Hillary committed to an intense physical training regiment and raised $40,000 to make the trip herself. On April 23, 2007, at the age of 75, Hillary became the first African-American woman to ski to, and stand on the North Pole.

Kenneth Hinkel is professor of Geography at the University of Cincinnati, and has an M.A. in Physical Geography and a Ph.D. in Geology. His research efforts are concentrated on permafrost and periglacial studies conducted in the Arctic, primarily in northern Alaska. This research has been continually funded by the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation since 1991, and focuses on energy and moisture exchange between the atmosphere and permafrost, or permanently frozen ground.

Andrea Juan works with photography, digital video, graphic art, and installation. From 1996-1998, she developed a project on non-toxic printmaking with photopolymers. In 2005, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to develop her Antarctica Project and has travelled to Antarctica four times. While there, she recorded images and sounds of the terrain, images projected onto glacial walls, and performances on ice shelves during storms. Her body of work is based on scientific investigations related to climate changes. Juan has been a professor of Art at National University Tres de Febrero, UNTREF, Buenos Aires since 1999. In early 2008 she curated the Polar South Project, consisting of an interdisciplinary exhibition of work created by international artists based on their travels to Antarctica, and a symposium, at Museum of National University of Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the summer of 2008, Antarctica III, Methane, was featured at The Project Room for New Media at the Chelsea Art Museum and Candiani Center in Venice, Italy.

Isaac Julien graduated from St. Martin's School of Art in 1984. He founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective (1983-1992) and Normal Films in 1991. In 2001, he was nominated for the Turner Prize for his film The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos, and Vagabondia (2000), choreographed by Javier de Frutos. Julien is a recipient of the prestigious MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Life Achievement Award (2002). In 2003, he won the Grand Jury Prize at Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single-screen version of Baltimore. He is a visiting faculty member at the Whitney Museum of American Arts and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University's Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies. Isaac's 2008 film Derek, a biopic of Derek Jarman starring Oscar winning actress Tilda Swinton, was critically acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival.

Laura Kay is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College. She is also the Chair of the Department of Women's Studies and serves as Interim Associate Dean for Curriculum and Governance. She spent thirteen months at the South Pole in 1984-85 as a graduate student in Astronomy. At Barnard College she teaches courses on Life in the Universe, Cosmology, Women and Science, and Polar Exploration. Her website of Polar-related material is available at www.phys.barnard.edu/~kay/polar/.

An-My Lê, a photographer, was born in Saigon, Vietnam. She came to the United States in 1975 as a political refugee, and earned a BAS and an MS from Stanford University and an MFA from Yale University School of the Arts. Her subject matter contains both war reenactments as well as images of soldiers in the U.S. training for service in the Middle East. As Merrily Kerr of Time Out New York writes, "Lê does not sensationalize her subject . . .. Instead, the somber black-and-white photographs disclose the limits of training and suggest that our soldiers may have a lot to learn when they arrive overseas" (October 2004, Issue no. 472). Recent solo exhibitions include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, PS1/MoMA, DIA: Beacon. She received the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers grant in 2008 to travel to Antarctica. She is also an assistant professor of photography at Bard College.

Heidi Lim is a Physician Assistant who has spent five of the last six years wintering at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. She is currently finishing up a winter season at the station with a crew of 60 that has been isolated from the rest of the world for the past eight months. Heidi has also spent much time working in remote areas in Alaska as a health care provider, from the Aleutian and Probilof Islands to the high Arctic region. She is scheduled to redeploy from Antarctica in early November 2008 and will relocate to New York in January 2009.

Jane D. Marsching is a digital media artist. Her current project, Arctic Listening Post, explores our past, present and future human impact on the Arctic environment through interdisciplinary and collaborative practices, including video installations, virtual landscapes, dynamic websites, and data visualizations. Recent exhibitions include: the ICA Boston; MassMoCA; North Carolina Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA; and Sonoma Museum of Art, CA. She has received grants from Creative Capital, LEF Foundation, Artadia and Artists Resource Trust. With Mark Alice Durant in 2005, she curated The Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology, and the Paranormal, at The Center for Art and Visual Culture, Baltimore, MD; a catalog of the exhibition was published in June 2006 with essays by Marsching, Durant, Marina Warner and Lynne Tillman. She is currently Assistant Professor in Studio Foundation at Massachusetts College of Art. She received her MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York City, in 1995. Her website is www.janemarsching.com.

DJ SPOOKY (Paul D Miller, born 1970, Washington DC) is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and Rapgun amongst other publications. Miller's work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work New York Is Now has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller's first collection of essays, entitled Rhythm Science was published by MIT Press in 2004. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media was recently released by MIT Press. Miller's deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of the legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records. Other releases include Optometry (2002), a jazz project featuring some of the best players in the downtown NYC jazz scene, and Dubtometry (2003) featuring Lee "Scratch" Perry and Mad Professor. Miller's latest collaborative release, Drums of Death, features Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Chuck D of Public Enemy among others. He also produced material on Yoko Ono's new album Yes, I'm a Witch.

Anne Noble has produced a substantial body of work that includes landscape photography, documentary photography, portraits, and large-scale installations incorporating both still and moving images. In 2003-04, a major retrospective of her works, States of Grace, toured New Zealand. Major group exhibitions include High Chair: New Zealand Artists on Childhood, St. Paul St, Auckland, 2005; The Line between Us, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2004; and Slow Release: Recent Photography from New Zealand, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2002. She first went to Antarctica as an Antarctica Arts Fellow in 2002 and began to photograph Christchurch. In March 2005, she returned to Antarctica with a Chilean cruise ship to photograph tourist sites and the Antarctic tourism experience. Noble was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to photography and is currently a professor of fine arts at Massey University, Wellington.

Gísli Pálsson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland. His publications include Travelling Passions: Stefansson, the Arctic Explorer and Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, among many others. He was awarded the prestigious Resenstiel Award in Oceanographic Science in 2000.

Andrea Polli (www.andreapolli.com) is a digital media artist living in New York City. She is an associate professor in the Integrated Media Arts MFA Program at Hunter College/CUNY. Polli's work addresses issues related to science and technology in contemporary society, and often brings together artists and scientists from various disciplines. She also works with city planners, environmental scientists, historians, and other experts to look at the impact of climate on the future of human life both locally and globally. During 2007/2008, she spent two months in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation Artist's Residency where she worked alongside weather and climate scientists in the Dry Valleys, at The South Pole and other remote locations. For more information about that project, see www.90degreessouth.org.

Annie Pootoogook is a third generation Inuit artist. Both her mother and grandmother were prolific and accomplished graphic artists. She draws on personal experience to guide her artwork, which provides an image of her life and broader Inuit life in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Canada. She depicts every day scenes, relatives, and common experiences, as well as spiritual beliefs and darker social issues. Her domestic scenes address often disturbing themes including alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, depression, and drug addiction. She won the Sobey Art Award in 2006.

Lisa Rand graduated from Barnard College in 2005. She majored in English with a minor in Astronomy. She currently works in science educational publishing.

Connie Samaras' photographic and video work deals with constructions of history and the imaginary as they pertain to the vast changes in U.S. society and shifting formations of national identity. She does so by investigating a range of issues such as the legacies of social change movements, the political and psychological geographies embedded in the everyday, speculative landscape, and the function of nostalgia in an era of global capitalism. She is also interested in the potential of art as historical artifact, one that embraces paradox and the terrain of the unconscious. In 2004 she was awarded a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Grant to photograph built environments at the South Pole, Antarctica. Titled V.A.L.I.S. (Vast Active Living Intelligence System, 2005-07) after Philip Dick's science fiction novel of the same name, the photographs and videos making up this series ruminate on the simultaneous dystopic and utopic imaginings of the only landscape on earth where there are no indigenous peoples. Other recent awards include California Community Foundation/Getty Visual Artists Fellowship (2006), Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Visual Arts Fellowship C.O.L.A (2003), Anonymous Was A Woman Fellowship (2003), and the Adaline Kent Award, San Francisco Art Institute (2002). Her next photographic project, After the American Century, deals with Dubai, gender, and constructions of the future. Samaras has exhibited her work extensively. She is based in Los Angeles where she is represented by de Soto Gallery, and is a Professor in the Department of Studio Art at UC Irvine.

Mary Simon is the President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an office to which she was elected in July 2006. A lifelong social justice advocate for Aboriginal rights, Simon was appointed by former Canadian Prime Minister Chrétien as the first Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 1994, a post she held until 2003. From 1999 to 2001 she also served as the Canadian Ambassador to Denmark and as a member of NAFTA's Commission on Environmental Cooperation Joint Public Advisory Committee, and as its chairperson from 1997 to 1998. Simon was also the Chancellor of Trent University between 1995 and 1999, and has been awarded a long list of honors, including the Order of Canada, National Order of Quebec, the Gold Order of Greenland, the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, among many others. She is a Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America and of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, and has received honorary law degrees from four distinguished universities. Simon is also the author of the book Inuit: One Arctic—One Future.

Gabrielle Walker is a writer, speaker, and broadcaster who specializes in climate change and energy. She has a PhD in Natural Science from Cambridge University and has been Climate Change Editor of the science journal Nature, Features Editor of New Scientist and visiting professor at Princeton University. Her work has taken her to all seven continents including five visits to Antarctica. She has written and edited hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. Her popular science books are published in more than twenty countries.

Marina Zurkow is a Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Her own combined video and installation art focuses on a narrative exploration of how humans relate to plants, animals, and the weather. Her work has been shown at such venues as The Sundance Film Festival, The Rotterdam Film Festival, Res Fest, Ars Electronica, Creative Time, The Kitchen, The Walker Art Center, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, and Eyebeam. She has also been recognized as a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, a 2003 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, and a 2001 Creative Capital grantee.