Events

Working Papers Series
Caring Masculinities September 15, 2023, 12-2 PM ET
First Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024 Communities of Care featuring Tracie Canada and Antonia Randolph, with commentaries by J. Malton and M. Wallace

Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024: Reconsidering Communities of Care
The experiment of sharing research continues. One or two presenters share original unpublished papers beforehand and two respondents offer insights and reflections. Working papers seminars series are open to the general public upon signing up
Migrant Domestic Workers October 27, 2023 12-2pm ET
Second Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024 Communities of Care featuring Valerie Francisco-Menchavez and Grazielle Valentim Figueredo, with commentaries by A. Paul and P. Banerjee
Carcerality & Care. November 17, 2023 12-2pm ET
Third Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024 Communities of Care featuring Joseph Hiller and Katie Von Wald . Commentaries by M. Seigel
Queering Care December 1, 2023 10am-12pm ET
Fourth Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024 Queering Care featuring Nora Kssner, Tankut and Edward Nadurata. Commentaries by P. Nicoli and P. Sigal
Alternative Care Networks January 26, 2024, 12-2 pm ET
Fifth Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024 Alternative Care Networks featuring Jieun Cho, Elizabeth Olson and Leiha Edmonds. Commentaries by Tatjana Thelen and Kim England
Workshops
Visualizing Care Series 2022-2021
Making care more visible and defamiliarizing the naturalized representations of care. Cycle of Workshops funded by Duke Humanities Unbounded from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022
Care Workshops 2020-2021
Between 2020 and 2021, we organized a series of public online conversations focused on care. Topics varied and we examined issues such as post-work, queer kinships, vaccine hesitancy, global labor standards
Value of Love
Value of LoveRevaluing Care in the Global Economy first event Workshop at Duke University, April 4 and 5, 2019Workshop Schedule Thursday, April 4 8:30-9:00: breakfast 9:00-9:15: Welcoming remarks by Dean Rachel Kranton & Jocelyn Olcott 9:15-10:00: Introductions (all present, including students, etc.; name, discipline/field, interests) 10-12: short presentations by invited participants (20 people; each participant […]
Conferences
Visualizing Care Imaginaries & Infrastructures 2022
Transnational Conference on May 12, 13, 14, 2022 on QiQoChat
Contesting Care Conference 2021
Conference organized by Duke University & University of Exeter on June 30 and July 1 2021
Epistemologies of Care
Epistemologies of CareRethinking Global Political Economy Conference at the Amsterdam Law School, 4-6 December, 2019Programme 4 December 2019 14.30-15.00 Registration 15.00-15.15 Opening Remarks Marija Bartl, Amsterdam Law School Jocelyn Olcott, History Department, Duke University 15.15-17.oo Keynote […]
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Podcast
“The Covid-19 Childcare Crisis” seeks to examine how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed existing problems in the U.S. childcare system. Our three panelists -Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts’s Fifth District, Dr. Bisa Batten Lewis of the BCDI-Atlanta, and Rhian Evans Allvin of NAEYC -will offer their insights on the “childcare crisis” and explore policy solutions to address the specific challenges revealed by COVID. The webinar will also include discussion of how childcare has shaped working from home, intersectionality in policy responses, and the childcare policy at the state-and national-level.
SPEAKERS
Congresswoman Katherine Clark: US Representative for Massachusetts’s 5th Congressional District;
Rhian Evans Allvin: CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC);
Dr. Bisa Batten Lewis: President of the Black Child Development Institute (BCDI)-Atlanta.
MODERATOR
Amanda Kang
This workshop seeks to explore the emerging global phenomenon of mutual aid in the pandemic era. We invite mutual aid practitioners and researchers from Italy, China, and Argentina. They will share observations from the ground as well as offer insights about the embedded structural issues. How do we measure the benefits and risks of mutual aid? What is the relationship between mutual aid assistance and state assistance? How might mutual aid in the pandemic differ from that in other circumstances? With connections and comparisons between different countries, we hope to altogether reimagine and move towards a future full of new possibilities of care.
SPEAKERS
Elia Zaru: PhD candidate in Cultures and Societies of Contemporary Europe at the Scuola Normale Superiore; activist of “Radio Onda d’Urto”;
Maisa Bascuas & Ana Julia Bustos: feminist and popular activist from Buenos Aires, Argentina;
ZHIZHU: independent filmmaker; mutual aid practitioner in the Wuhan quarantine.
MODERATOR
Tania Rispoli
Contact tracing has become one common practice to monitor and track the transmission of COVID-19 both regionally and globally. While the practice aims to take care of public health, its collection and use of data has still generated debates and concerns around the question of control, privacy and market, which, of course, also varies depending on different contact tracing approaches and conductors. With collective health on the one side and privacy protection on the other, how shall we balance control and care involved in contact tracing? How could we understand its implications and foresee its development? In this workshop we will explore not only the pros and cons of contact tracing but also the bias implied in the viral transmission, the rhetoric of the “super spreader,” and the ways through which technology might or might not constitute a more caring future.
SPEAKERS
Susan Craddock: Professor in the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota;
Mauro Turrini: sociologist of science and medicine at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies (IPP) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC);
Vincenzo Pavone: Director of the Institute of Public Policies (IPP), of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC);
Morris Fabbri: Graduate, MA in Bioethics and Science Policy, Duke University.
MODERATOR
Yanping Ni
In this time of global pandemic, the expression “I can’t breathe” carries a dual meaning: it is both a tell-tale symptom of COVID-19, and a now-familiar mantra of the Black Lives Matter movement, echoing the final words of Eric Garner and George Floyd. This seminar is dedicated to an organic, accessible, and robust discussion of why the social justice initiative to “Defund the Police” is possible, necessary, and desirable. What does it mean (and what would it look like) to defund the police, and how does the current discourse track in academic vs. non-academic spaces? Who is this movement for—and who among us are still unaccounted for? Our seminar is comprised of individuals rooted in activism, academia, and the arts, who are calling in from across the United States. They bring their experience and expertise not only to imagine American society without the current policing system, but also to think beyond prisons, punitivity, and exclusionary practices in our institutions and movements.
SPEAKERS
Steph Hopkins, Durham activist, member of BYP100 and Durham Beyond Policing; J Kameron Carter, Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, author of forthcoming book The Religion of Whiteness: An Apocalyptic Lyric; Vincente SubVersive Perez, UC Berkeley PhD Student, performance poet, activist, and author of B(lack)NESS & LATINI(dad);
Meghan McDowell, Assistant Professor of History, Politics, and Social Justice at Winston-Salem State University, scholar-activist who studies forms of safety and justice that do not rely on policing or prisons;
Stephanie Green, Duke Undergraduate majoring in Public Policy, and member of Duke Black Coalition Against Policing.
MODERATOR
Jessica Covil
A focused interview by Yanping Ni with ZHIZHI – a Wuhan mutual aid practitioner and vlogger
ZHI ZHU is an independent filmmaker and a well-known vlogger, whose works have been well received on various Chinese social media platforms, including Sina Weibo and Bilibili. As a Wuhan native, he participated in the local mutual aid societies during the quarantine period. He was a driver offering rides to healthcare workers. He was a carrier sending medical supplies and food around the city to people in need. In addition, with his camera, he has revealed untold narratives of mutual aid societies, healthcare workers, and ordinary people. By presenting the real situations to people outside the quarantine, his vlogs successfully dispeled endless rumors about Wuhan. His series of vlogs entitled “Wuhan Quarantine Diary” has become one of the most informative and powerful testimony of that exceptional policy. (Click here to check out his fascinating vlogs!)
If you would like to further explore the topics of mutual aid, please refer to our podcast entitled “Mutual Aid around the World,” which features scholars and activists from Italy, China, and Argentina, and aims to reflect upon new forms of care from a global perspective.
Please note: the original interview was conducted in Chinese mandarin language. For the English translation of the interview transcript, please see this document.
Transgender people often face significant barriers to care. Many of these barriers stem from fear of discrimination at the hands of healthcare professionals, social workers, and other non-profit entities. The Covid crisis has highlighted and exacerbated many pre-existing discriminatory practices. In the U.S., the roll-back of Obama-era healthcare protections based on gender identity in the midst of the pandemic has further marginalized the transgender community and created new obstacles for care. This workshop features scholars from Mexico, Brazil, and the United States in a discussion about how Covid has impacted transgender care, how transgender communities and activists have responded, and how we can move forward with more equitable care practices.
SPEAKERS
Jaqueline Gomes De Jesus is a Professor of Psychology at the Rio de Janeiro Federal Institute. Siobhan Guerrero McManus holds a Doctorate of Philosophy of Science and is a Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) Chris Barcelos is an Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
MODERATOR
LJ Brandli, PhD Student in History
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the lockdown measures that governments around the world implemented have also brought with them a spike in gender violence. This aspect intersects with the exacerbation of economic, racial, and political violence, among others. In this transnational dialogue between feminist activists and academics from Argentina, Ecuador, India, and Italy, they will address the multiple forms of violence that have crystallized in this global health crisis, and they will discuss the possibilities for action that feminism from different latitudes envision.
SPEAKERS
Verónica Gago is professor of Sociology at the Instituto de Altos Estudios, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina, and she also teaches Political Science at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She has been visiting Scholar at the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, and is Assistant Researcher at the Argentinian National Council of Research (CONICET). Gago is the author of Feminist International: How to Change Everything (about to be published-Nov.2020 Verso), and Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (Tinta Limón 2014, Duke University Press, 2017), and of numerous articles published in journals and books throughout Latin America, Europe and the US. She is a member of the independent radical collective press Tinta Limón. She was part of the militant research experience Colectivo Situaciones, and she is now a member of Ni Una Menos.
Maya John teaches at the University of Delhi (India). She has been researching and publishing on the evolution of labour law in colonial and postcolonial India; the relationship between caste, gender and the labour market; the history of educational inequality in India; recent anti-rape agitations in India and gender-specific laws at the workplace. John is actively working with the Gharelu Kamgar Union, a union of domestic workers employed in Delhi-NCR. She is also active in unions of nurses, teachers and other sections of the urban workforce, and is associated with the women’s organization, Centre for Struggling Women.
Alejandra Santillana Ortiz is a Sociology graduate from Universidad Católica of Ecuador and has a master’s degree in Social Sciences from FLACSO (Social Sciences Latin American Faculty). She is currently a Ph.D. student at Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM) and she is working on her thesis about the political history of Ecuador´s Left-wing in the 70s and 80s. She is part of two work and debate groups of CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences): Gender, Feminism, and Latin American and Caribbean History Work Network, and Rural Development Critical Studies.
Alessandra Spano is a PhD student and assistant to the chair of Political Philosophy at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, in Catania. Her research focuses are on Critical Theory, Marxism and Feminist Thought, especially gravitating toward female thinkers in the US. She has been actively involved in Non una di meno, the Italian network for Women’s strike, and is associated with Migrants’ Coordination and Precarious Dis/connections, collectives which organize migrant, precarious and industrial workers’ struggles, on a local and transnational level.
SPEAKERS MODERATOR
Martha Liliana Espinosa
Who is an “essential” worker? Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of “essential work” has been broadened from doctors and emergency responders to include a range of work and care. But does the term “essential worker” have any legal significance? If not, how could we imagine a legal category of “essential” work that would adequately value the care work that essential workers perform? This is especially important given that many of today’s essential workers, such as grocery clerks, farmworkers, and childcare providers, lack basic labor protections and job security, even as they are publicly lauded for their service and sacrifice. This panel discussion will examine where the idea of “essential workers” fits into local and international law, in order to understand why our most valued workers are too often the most vulnerable.
SPEAKERS
Pedro Augusto Gravatá Nicoli, associate professor at the Faculty of Law of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)
Supriya Routh, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Victoria
Candida Leone, Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law
MODERATOR
Ashton W Merck, Visiting Lecturer, Duke Kunshan University
Visual Archive
A panel with multiple scholars, activists, and practitioners and two graphic designers (Anne Dubos and A Visual) wonder what does it mean to visualize care?
What alternative care strategies are emerging in popular economies? Here a graphic recording on the global panel economias populars
Since 2016 transfeminist strikes spread out around the globe. Born as tools against gender violence they gained a momentum as coalitional and intersectional practices for reclaiming new forms of here. Here a graphic recording of the panel
Past, present, and future of post-work approaches. Is the basic income a tool for imagining a post-work society? Here a graphic recording of the panel
In Fall 2021 undergraduate students at Duke in the class of “Women At Work” and “Women and the Political Process” had the option to produce a short documentary video, instead of writing the paper. Here is the graphic recording of a few documentaries presented
How do we visualize care from below and above? How technology can help us in visualizing and connecting?
How algorithms trap the body? This panel explored the opacity of care, its ambivalences and the potentiality of new struggles. Here the graphic recording
This panel aimed to analyze what alternative approaches to economics and labor would entail. From reconceptualizing work to re-counting its value. Here the graphic recording
Virtual care lab is organized by Sara Suárez and Alice Yuan Zhang in partnership with NAVEL, a non-profit cultural organization and community space in Los Angeles
Imagining care beyond heteronormative and nuclear household. What is trans care? Graphic recording of the panel on Queer Care during 2022 “Visualizing Care. Imaginaries & Infrastructures” conference
What democracy can be? What is a radical politics? Graphic recording by A Visual Approach on the politics of care
Care and love are fundamental to communal life. Thinking about decolonize mourning. Graphic recording of a panel on epistemologies of care
Can we imagine alternative infrastructures? Graphic recording of a panel on care infrastructures in unequal world
Can the law care? What law can do for unpaid care? What is the global care policy index? Graphic recording of a panel on legal structures of care
Making care more visible and defamiliarizing the naturalized representations of care. Cycle of Workshops funded by Duke Humanities Unbounded from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022