Women’s Center names Hankyeol Song as first Feminist-in-Residence

The Women’s Center at Northwestern University has announced Hankeol Song as the inaugural fellow selected to their new Feminist-in-Residence Program. This residency program invites activists, artists, engaged scholars, practitioners and educators to campus for one academic year to further their independent feminist work and incubate projects that further the Women’s Center’s mission and goals. Song, an artist-filmmaker and activist, will be in residence during the 2020–21 academic year.

“The Feminist-in-Residence Program seeks to blur the boundaries between our campus and our community. Song, as an embedded artist, activist and scholar, embodies that intention beautifully, and we are delighted to have her with us for the next academic year,” said Sekile Nzinga, Women’s Center director and interim chief diversity officer at Northwestern.

Song’s research interests — which include film/media, postcolonialism, feminism and queer theory — led them to co-founding the Ana Cha collective with Theresa L. Geller and Charlotte Liu (https://anacha.squarespace.com/), a coalition of scholars, artists and filmmakers who interrogate the cultural world through a critical feminist lens.

Politically activated through campus anti-rape activism as an undergraduate student in Iowa, Song is currently active as a member of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) and involved with the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture (CFIST) and the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC).

Song will join the University community with a wealth of ideas for working with student activists and building ties between the Women’s Center and spaces of “feminist collectivity and liberation politics” across Chicago. Song also will be engaging the communities through film and capturing the experience in documentary form.

“As the first person to inhabit this role, Song’s contributions will help our Center to shape the future focus of the fellowship. This new initiative is also quite timely given the great need for feminist analysis, action and leadership across the globe in this historical moment,” Nzinga said.

Since 1985, the Women’s Center has been a site for intellectual and political engagement and has fostered the work and projects of feminist artists, activists and scholars both on and off campus through its programming. The Center strives to continue its tradition of offering direct support to women, trans, and nonbinary students, faculty and staff, while also serving as a site for the production of transformative work through which Feminists in Residence can share their praxis and expertise with the broader Northwestern community.