At the intersection of the artistic and the political, Caesura is a podcast rooted in a celebration of women and our common work for peace, freedom, and equality.
Caesura means “pause”: a break, a time for listening and reflection. Join us as we dive into the words of Colombian poet Ángela Ramos and interview guests from all over the world, exploring topics ranging from feminism to trauma, intergenerational heritage to violence, pop culture to poetry and so much more.
In her poems, Ángela captures and expresses hopes and pain that are universal to the experience of being human. We believe that poetry is deeply rooted in our own histories, our past or present experiences, and that it can be a means to make our voices heard, free ourselves from the narratives that are being forced upon us, and shape a peaceful and feminist future.
Caesura features an exceptional panel of guests: Cynthia Enloe, Diana María Salcedo, Oswaldo Montoya, Lepa Mladjenović, and Selma Asotić bring their own experiences and perspectives as activists and scholars. Listen to their insights on intergenerational trauma and wisdom, the logics of global security, the role men can play in supporting women’s voices, the process of healing through feminism and sisterhood, and the future of feminism.[xyz-ips snippet=”123″]
To ensure Caesura is accessible to everyone, written transcripts of each episode
are available on request. Please contact us at communications@wilpf.org.
Ángela Maria Ramos has performed and debuted her creative writing and music Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway for the Vineyard Theatre, Dixon Place, TADA Youth Theatre, The Duplex, and the Five Angels Theatre. In 2019, she received a scholarship for the 1st Songwriting Intensive Program at the Wharton Center of Michigan State University under Morgan James and Doug Wamble’s mentorship.
As a writer, she has been commissioned to write and perform her original writing for the National Abortion Campaign in Colombia, the Nobel Women’s Initiative, and for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She is a proud alum and former moderator of the BIPOC Critics Lab of Jose Solis hosted by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Originally from Colombia, Ángela is a former Rotary International GRSP Scholar and USS Passatino Scholar, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Theatre and Political Science, with a concentration in International Politics, from Queens College of the City University of New York.
In 2020, she was awarded the Richard Henry Hommel Award for dedication to the Theatre at Queens College and the Lenny I. Markovitz Scholarship to attend the Yale University’s Women’s Campaign School in the summer of 2021.
Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Clark University in Massachusetts, USA. Among her most recent books are a fully updated edition of Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, and The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy. Cynthia has been recognised for her contributions by several organisations, including The International Studies Association and the Gender Justice Caucus of the International Crimes Court.
Diana María Salcedo López is politologist and an anti-militarist feminist. For 15 years she has served as a consultant for various non-governmental organisations, international cooperation agencies, and the United Nations in Colombia in processes related to the inclusion of women’s rights, gender perspectives, and intersectionality in public policies and in the monitoring of territorial processes of peacebuilding and empowerment of women victims of armed conflict. She currently leads the Colombia section of WILPF, la Liga Internacional de Mujeres por la Paz y la Libertad.
Oswaldo Montoya (M.A., PMP) is a Networks Associate for the Global Secretariat of MenEngage, working on accountable practices for engaging men in gender justice. He is one of the founders of the Men’s Group against Violence in Nicaragua, which was the first men’s group of its kind in Central America. Oswaldo has served in different roles as an educator, counselor, programme manager, and researcher for social justice work on gender and racial equity, with an emphasis on working with men and parents for ending gender-based violence and child maltreatment.
Lepa Mlađenović is a feminist, lesbian, and anti-war activist from Serbia. She is a feminist counselor for women survivors of male violence or lesbophobia, a workshop facilitator, and lecturer. She co-founded the Women in Black Against War, a global network promoting peace and justice. She is the author of several essays on male violence, feminist lesbian responses to war, and women’s solidarity. She is a researcher on lesbian activism during wartimes and a member of international networks on wartime rape, male violence, and feminist initiatives.
Selma Asotić is a bilingual, lesbian poet from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her poems and essays have appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, EuropeNow, and The Well Review. A runner-up for the 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, a Pushcart nominee, and a semi-finalist of the 2021 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, she holds an MFA degree from Boston University. She lives in New York.
Sara Dominguez is interested in how popular culture, more specifically literature, music, and cinema, influences political resistance movements. She studied Political Science in Lisbon and holds an MSc in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Sara has lived in the Netherlands, US, Scotland, Palestine, and Egypt, and she is currently a MENA Associate at WILPF, working in advocacy.
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