Barnard Library Research Awards

The Barnard Library Research Award supports research using collections at the Barnard Library, Barnard Zine Library, and Barnard Archives, resulting in any final format.

Awardees will receive $3000.

Strengths of the Archives include:

• Papers of feminist authors (for example, the Ntozake Shange Papers and the Frances Whyatt Papers)
• Feminist study and struggle, with a focus on abolitionist and collective action (for example, the Coalition for Women Prisoners Coalition, the Christine E. Bose Wages for Housework Research Collection, the Mirra Komarovsky Papers, the Barnard Center for Research on Women records, 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)
• The feminist sex wars of the 1980s and histories of sexuality (for example, the Barnard Center for Research on Women records and the Nancy Friday Papers)
• Zinemaking and feminist publishing networks (for example, zinester ephemera collections and the Barnard Center for Research on Women Historical Periodicals and Feminist Ephemera collections)
• The history of Barnard College, its administration, faculty, students, and alums, as well as higher education and historically women’s colleges more broadly.

Strengths of the Barnard Zine Library:

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.