Communities of Care Symposium 2025

Julie A. Minich holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese from Stanford University and a BA in Comparative Literature from Smith College. She is the author of Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico (Temple University Press, 2014), winner of the 2013-2014 MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latina and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies. Drawing from Chicana/o studies and disability studies, this book works against the common assumption that disability serves primarily as a metaphor for social decay or political crisis, engaging with literary and filmic texts from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in which disability functions to extend knowledge of what it means to belong to a political community. Additionally, Dr. Minich’s articles have appeared in journals such as GLQ, Comparative Literature, the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, MELUS, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. Continue reading.

Jina B. Kim is a scholar, writer, and educator of feminist disability studies, queer-of-color critique, and contemporary multi-ethnic U.S. literature. Broadly, her teaching and research aims to connect the intellectual and movement lineages of disability politics and feminist-/queer-of-color critique, extending the work of building solidarity across difference. Dr. Minich is currently working on a new book project, tentatively titled Enforceable Care: Health, Justice, and Latina/o Expressive Culture. Minich explores how Latina/o cultural production depicts public conflict around legislation governing health care and disability accommodations. While mainstream discourses about the distribution of health care often implicitly construct some as deserving of health (and others as undeserving), the texts examined in this study critique health ideologies that present health crises as failures of individual responsibility and create a political environment in which it is seen as a duty of citizenship to maintain oneself in a state of maximum able-bodiedness. The study uncovers the social context in which individuals make health decisions to show how health and disease are determined by factors that cannot entirely be reduced to questions of individual choice. Continue reading.

The Communities of Care project welcomes proposals for symposium presentations by community members, artists, activists, and scholars. The symposium brings together people who are interested in discussing care, disability, and communities from all backgrounds, including but not limited to, scholarship, activism, art. While the Communities of Care project is grounded in critical disability studies, we are interested in the broader range of approaches to care and disability.

The symposium has three themes: Celebrate; Create solidarity; Share Knowledge. 

• Celebrate: Share our successes in caring for one another, building networks of care and resilience, and creating joy in sharing time with one another.
• Create Solidarity: How can we support one another in our movements and goals? How can disparate work on care structures that impact particular people be supported by people doing work in other spaces?
• Share Knowledge: What do we know about care? Where does this knowledge come from? What do we still need to learn? What are opportunities for co-creating and sharing knowledge that take into account the diversity of standpoints and experiences of care?

November 27, 2024: Deadline to submit proposals.
December 20, 2024: Notification of the status of your proposal
January 31, 2025: Deadline to submit access requests.
April 24 and 25, 2025: Symposium

The following are suggested presentation types, but you should feel free to be creative in your proposal.

• Workshops (90 minutes) These may be individual or co-facilitated.
• Roundtables (90 minutes) These should include a moderator and 3 to 5 respondents.
• Panels (90 minutes) These should include 3 individual papers and a chair or commentator.
• Individual papers (15 minutes) These will be organized into panels with 3 papers and 30-minutes for discussion.
• Art displays or Performances (90 minutes) These may be organized with multiple artist statements or performances in the allotted time, or to run the full 90 minutes. Please specify your needs for set up and time in your proposal.
• Other types of presentations are welcome.

Grant Proposals must include:

• A description of the presentation. (Approximately 100 -300 words. Images may be included). This might include: an abstract for each paper for panels; or an abstract or outline for a workshop.
• Proposed questions and a brief introduction to each participant for round tables.
• A summary or artists statement for displays or performances or other types of explanations for other types of proposals.
• A statement on how the presentation relates to the theme of Communities of Care (Approximately 100-300 words).
• A brief statement of how you come to this work (as a scholar, activist, artist, community member, or any other identities or affiliations that may apply).
• Any requirements for set up (for example, a projector).

Please submit your proposal documents via one email to:
communitiesofcare@buffalo.edu

The Communities of Care 2025 Symposium is an inclusive and welcoming event. If you have questions about accessibility or would like to request an accommodation, please include your requirements with your registration form or contact Laurel Payne. Requests should be made by January 31, 2025.

We have reserved a block of rooms with the Hyatt Regency Buffalo at a discounted rate for conference attendees. Details on registering as part of the group will be sent to registered attendees.