Center for 21st Century Studies

2026-27 is the Year of Slow Action

What does it mean to act with deliberation, care, and consistency—and to do so in community? As the Center for 21^st Century Studies enters the third and final year of our SLOW research and programming arc, we turn from the epistemological and relational dimensions of slowness toward its practical and political possibilities. Slow Action names a mode of engagement that purposefully resists the logic of zero-sum efficiency in favor of durable, values-rooted ways of being and doing together. These forms of action are not rigid or unchangeable but rather are flexible, responsive, and deeply attuned to the world we each move through.

Building upon the foundations of Slow Knowing and Slow Care, C21 will explore the practices, methodologies, histories, and theories of collective organizing across communities and institutions. Organizing, in the fullest sense of the word, offers a way to collaboratively imagine new worlds and cultivate our capacity to work collectively across difference in order to act in concert with other humans and non-humans, technologies and ecologies. While strikes, protests, and other visible forms of collective action capture immediate public attention, they are made possible only by the slower, less visible work of building trust, forming coalitions, and sustaining shared commitments across time. It is this foundational labor – patient, relational, and often unrecognized – that Slow Action seeks to illuminate.

Together with interdisciplinary humanities scholars and community leaders, and with Milwaukee as our touchstone, C21’s 2026–2027 programming will ask: How might the humanities help us understand and enact organizing as a form of care? What does it look like to build actionable pathways that are both purposeful and adaptable, rooted in values yet open to change? How do attention and pace shape what is possible – inside and outside the university – as we face the most pressing challenges of our time? From knowing to caring to acting, C21 invites you to participate in a year of intentional, collective, and slow work.