Applications are now open for the Barnard Library Research Awards 2023 - 2024! Awardees will receive $3000 to support research using the Barnard Archives and Zine Library. The award aims to expand access to the Barnard Collections for researchers working on projects that support access, equity, inclusion and social justice.
Undergraduate and graduate students, non-Barnard faculty (including adjuncts and term faculty), journalists, and independent scholars (including artists and organizers) are encouraged to apply. Please note that current Barnard faculty and staff are not eligible for this award.
This award supports scholarship in all media, including articles, books, film and video, data sets, art, 3D models, etc. The jury members (Archives: Martha Tenney & Obden Mondésir, IMATS: Elana Altman, Zines: Jenna Freedman) select projects based on the following:
- clarity and feasibility
- strength of their ties to the collections at Barnard
- originality, which could be in terms of research approach, topic or format, and
- contribution to goals of access, equity, inclusion and social justice (with a particular interest in projects related to feminist organizing or intersectional marginalized identities)
Additionally, we may prioritize projects that lack traditional institutional resources for research.
Particular strengths of the Archives and Zines collections are the history of the college, feminist authors, second and third wave feminist and LGBTQ print ephemera (1970s-present newsletters, pamphlets, zines, etc.), records of the Barnard Center for Research on Women and related collections of feminist ephemera and publications, riot grrrl, late 20th century girlhood, 20th century women's education, representations of women’s sexuality and embodiment, contemporary zine culture, zines by women of color. Additional details can be found at the end of this post.
Applications are open from December 1, 2022 to February 1, 2023. Award notifications will be sent to applicants by March 15, 2023 for research to be conducted at Barnard during the period July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024
Award money may be used for whatever will facilitate the researcher's work at Barnard, e.g., travel, housing, family care. Grantees will be expected to write a short summary (~300 words) of their research experience at Barnard Library, which may be shared on the library website and social media channels.
Librarians at Barnard were inspired to create this program by similar awards at Columbia University and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture
Please contact Jenna Freedman (jfreedma@barnard.edu) with questions about holdings, resources, or logistics.
Previous winners include:
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2021/22: Naima Green
- 2019/20: Kirsty Fife, Maya Garfinkel, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- 2018/19: Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot and Denise J. Murphy,
- 2017/18: Desiree Abu-Odeh, Andrea Adomako, Kyara Andrade
- 2016/17: Lena Palacios, Susana Sepulveda
- 2015/16: Agatha Beins, Magdalena Olszanowski, Aiesha Turman
- 2014/15: Michelle Moravec, Joshunda Sanders, Yin Wang
More details about our collections:
Strengths of the Archives include: papers of feminist authors (for example, the Ntozake Shange Papers); feminist study and struggle, with a focus on abolitionist and collective action (for example, the Barnard Center for Research on Women records, the Coalition for Women Prisoners Coalition, the Christine E. Bose Wages for Housework Research Collection, the Mirra Komarovsky Papers, and the Barnard Organization of Soul and Solidarity (B.O.S.S.) Records); New York City feminist arts scenes and worlds (for example, the Sabra Moore NYC Women's Art Movement Collection, the Dianne Smith Papers, and the Freda Leinwand Collection); legal battles for reproductive justice and civil rights in the U.S. (for example the Maggie Leigh Groff Abortion Control Act Records, the Kathryn Kolbert Planned Parenthood v. Casey Records, and the Shirley A. Siegel Papers); zinemaking and feminist publishing networks (in addition to the Barnard Zine Library, associated zinester ephemera collections, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women Historical Periodicals and Feminist Ephemera collections); and the history of Barnard College, its administration, faculty, students, and alums.
Barnard's zines reflect the Barnard College student population's genders. We have zines by women, nonbinary people, and trans men, with a collection emphasis on zines by women of color and a newer effort to acquire more zines by trans women of all races and ethnicities. We collect zines on feminism and femme identity by people of all genders. The zines are personal and political publications on abolition, activism, anarchism, body image, gender, parenting, queer community, riot grrrl, sexual assault, COVID-19 experiences, and other topics. Our zines are at the lower end of the production level scale and typically cost $10 or less, with most of them in the $1-$5 range. Our zines are cataloged at the item level, making it relatively easy to find what you're looking for, from content, to style, e.g. sewn bindings.