Community members, artists, activists and scholars interested in discussing care, disability and communities will gather in Buffalo on April 24-25 for the Communities of Care Symposium 2025.

The symposium is presented by UB’s Communities of Care project, an interdisciplinary research project supported by the Mellon Foundation that seeks to better understand and address issues faced by caregivers and those with disabilities. The project combines the expertise of UB’s Center for Disability Studies and Gender Institute to develop elements both within the university and throughout the larger community.

The symposium will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. April 24 and 25 in the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. The event is free and open to the public; register by April 1. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Attendees will discuss the ways disabled, mad and neurodivergent people living at the intersections of gender, race and class have been engaging in care work and building community in Buffalo and beyond.

Serving as keynote speakers are Julie Avril Minich and Jina Kim.

Minch, associate professor of English at the University of Texas, is the author of “Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico” (Temple University Press, 2014) and the recipient of the 2013-14 Modern Language Association Prize in United States Latina and Latina and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies.

Minch is currently working on a new book project, tentatively titled “Enforceable Care: Health, Justice, and Latina/o Expressive Culture,” that explores how Latina/o cultural production depicts public conflict around legislation governing health care and disability accommodations.

Kim, assistant professor of English language and literature, and the study of women and gender at Smith College, 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 aim to connect the intellectual and movement lineages of disability politics and feminist-/queer-of-color critique, extending the work of building solidarity across difference.

She is the author of “Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing” (Duke University Press, 2025), a demonstration of why we need radical disability politics and aesthetics for navigating contemporary crises of care.