Barrie Karp - Biography

Barrie Karp (b. 1945 in Laredo, Texas) is a New York City philosophy professor and visual artist. Karp's work, as scholar and educator is at the intersection between (and arguably goes well beyond) several distinct disciplines and practices: between feminist and anti-racist critique, between psychoanalysis and political activism, and between literature, art, visual culture, and new media studies. Karp is interested in Continental philosophy, for instance the work of Luce Irigaray, and in the work of American feminists such as bell hooks, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Patricia J. Williams, Hazel Carby, Angela Davis, Sara Ruddick and Ann duCille. Through her pedagogy and scholarly activity, Karp has helped define feminism as a movement that can work across disciplinary boundaries and be informed by various traditions of scholarship. Karp has also worked to separate feminism from the so-called white privilege with which its critics sometimes associated it. Paintings of Karp's were featured in the November/December 2008 issue of Tikkun magazine and by the Tikkun editor's August 2009 online blog.

Academic career and art studies

After studying painting and liberal arts at Chatham College with Vaino T. Kola and Jerry Caplan from 1962 through 1964, she transferred to Columbia University, where she earned a B.S. in 1967. A teacher of philosophy, cultural studies, humanities and arts from a decidedly feminist and anti-racist perspective in New York City colleges since 1970, she filed an unsuccessful discrimination case against City College after losing her position in 1975 over her complaints to the affirmative action office about a "current and historical lack of female philosophy department faculty members at CCNY."

She completed an M.A. (1977), a M.Phil. (1979) and a Ph.D. (1980) in the Philosophy Department at City University of New York. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "Self-Deception." Since 1982, she has been a faculty member of Eugene Lang College and the School of Visual Arts (Humanities and Sciences Department).

Karp began art studies with Maria Lowenstein (1954 to 1959) and Lycoming College (Ian James, 1962). After her Chatham College studies she also studied art at Provincetown Workshop (Leo Manso, Victor Candell, summer 1964) and New York University (Leo Manso, fall 1964, spring 1965). After completing her Ph.D. she studied at the New School for Social Research (Leo Manso, early 1980s); with the Art Students League (Leo Manso, Rudolf Baranik, 1981-1983); and at the Provincetown Art Association Museum School (Selena Trieff, 1983).

SDS activism on Karp's behalf

After the administration of the New School decided not to renew Prof. Karp's contract to teach in the cultural studies department, the campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society conducted a May 7, 2008 protest rally “for a socially just, responsible, and democratic university.” The activist students characterized the administration decision as part of a plan to “corporatize” the school and restructure its curriculum away from the school’s progressive tradition.

In addition to seeking her rehiring, the students were demanding the removal of New School Board of Trustees treasurer Robert B. Millard over his chairmanship of L-3 Communications, a major military contractor. Eight students had been arrested for blocking the entrance to L-3 on March 19, 2008, the fifth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq. They were also protesting the New School's dealings with companies which they alleged were underpaying their workers and otherwise violating their rights and the school's "refusal to hear the demands" of Local 78 of the Asbestos, Lead & Hazardous Waste Laborers Union.

External links

• Barrie Karp's artwork site
• [1]
• Karp's web albums artwork
• Karp at Pierogi 2000
• Gender, Body, Culture, p. 88
• 2009 Tikkun Magazine, (painting titled "supplicant") chosen, written by & posted by editor Dave Belden to Tikkun Daily Blog, in conversation with August 3, 2009 Tikkun phone forum with & writings by Michael Eigen about the film Into Great Silence
• 2008 Tikkun Magazine, Nov/Dec. 2008 (painting published) November/December 2008 print issue, and Karp painting published, with writing by Alix Kates Shulman from her 2008 book To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Lang needs Barrie

Works, reviews and listings

• 2002 Barrie Karp, in "Art & Observance ~ School of Visual Arts Commemorates 9/11", exhibition catalog, p. 14, two drawings by Barrie Karp published
• Feminist Studies, 19:2, Summer 1993, 314 & 320
• IKON Magazine #7, Spring-Summer 1987, p. 124
• 1989, Eileen O’Neill, "(Re)presentations of Eros: Exploring Female Sexual Agency," in Alison Jaggar, Susan R. Bordo, eds., Gender/Body/Knowledge — Feminist Reconstructions of Being & Knowing, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 1989, 68-91
• 1987 Eileen O’Neill, "The Re-Imaging of Eros: Women Construct Their Own Sexuality," in IKON Magazine #7, Spring-Summer 1987, 118-126
• 1987 & 2005: Greg Masters, 2005, online review of “Barrie Karp/John Duch (Rastovski Gallery, East Village, January 28-February 15, 1987)”. Previously published in print, 1987 for Cover Magazine, posted online 2005
• Listed in Guide to the A.I.R. Gallery Archives, ca. 1972-2006, MSS 184, Fales Library and Special Collections, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
• Listed in National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Listed & reviewed at Abstract Art Online
• Internet Art Resources listing.
• 1976 group photo with Allen Ginsberg