Columbia Center for the Study of Social Difference - Incite at Columbia University
Columbia Center for the Study of Social Difference
A constellation of working groups that address gender, race, sexuality, and other intersecting forms of global inequality.
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The Columbia Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD) is an interdisciplinary research center supporting collaborative working groups that address gender, race, sexuality, and other forms of inequality to foster ethical and progressive social change.
CSSD was founded in 2015 and joined Incite Institute in 2025. Through several working groups, CSSD brings Columbia Arts and Sciences faculty into conversation with with scholars, artists, writers, and policymakers in the US and abroad.
CSSD is accepting proposals for Fall 2025 working groups.
Why Study Social Difference?
We live in a world where social differences—gender, wealth, race, ability, geography—have been made to matter. Differences undergird inequalities, local and global. They limit cultural horizons.
How are social differences created and institutionalized? How has science grounded or undermined such differences? How do liberal democracies founded on principles of equality tolerate profound injustice? The discrete categories by which we identify people have proven inadequate to understanding the complexities of power in our world. It is urgent that we understand the mutually constituted categories of difference that shape our social world and their cultural and economic impacts.
Projects led by the Center
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go to the Afro-Nordic Feminisms project
Afro-Nordic FeminismsEstablishing a space for Afro-Nordic scholarship, identity, culture, social movements, and social justice organizing.
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go to the Alternative Modes of Being project
Alternative Modes of Being
Bringing premodern knowledge traditions from Asia and Africa into dialogue with scholars focused on crises of capitalism, colonialism, and climate chaos.
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go to the Arts and Activism in the Americas project
Arts and Activism in the Americas
Examining how arts and activism respond to political repression in the Americas.
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go to the Extractive Media: Infrastructures and Aesthetics of Depletion project
Extractive Media: Infrastructures and Aesthetics of Depletion
Reinventing research questions on resource extraction across the disciplines of humanities and social sciences.
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go to the Insurgent Domesticities project
Insurgent Domesticities
Interrogating the politics of home through histories of solidarity, disobedience, stealth, and militancy, from the scale of the clothesline to that of the state.
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go to the Motherhood and Technology project
Motherhood and Technology
Exploring technological innovations that have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood in recent decades.
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go to the Recovery project
Recovery
Navigating the concept of recovery in social and political life through fields of governance, biomedicine, climate change, and economics.
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go to the Refugee Cities project
Refugee Cities
Bringing urban studies and refugee studies scholars together to examine how refugees settle and live in urban spaces.
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go to the Seeds of Diaspora project
Seeds of Diaspora
Approaching cultural landscapes and their evolution by examining non-native plants in New York City.
Latest news
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go to the What we can learn from our queer elders news
What we can learn from our queer eldersDenice Frohman and Caro De Robertis bring the experiences of queer elders into focus through creative works based on the Elders Project. -
go to the The assault on academic freedom has reached our doorstep news
The assault on academic freedom has reached our doorstepHow Incite Institute is responding to ongoing authoritarian threats—and how you can help. -
go to the Singing across America's divides news
Singing across America's dividesIn an increasingly divided nation, could cultivating connections through music bring us closer together? -
go to the Listening to and learning from the Voice of Freedom news
Listening to and learning from the Voice of FreedomA conversation with Dr. Shana L. Redmond on her Grammy nomination, Paul Robeson, music, and the current political moment.