Dear Friends,
Welcome back and hello to those who are new around here! Over the summer, up on the 9th floor of Curtin Hall, Katie and I have been building on the conversations and collaborations, workshops and research, that we supported last year as we turn to this new academic year.
C21 is in the middle of our 3-year programming arc on SLOW, where we are exploring and enacting slower-paced embodied modes of kinship and situation, in resistance to the short-term efficiency models that dominate our personal and political landscapes. While last year’s theme of “Slow Knowing” focused on the pace of being human, this year we aim to activate “Slow Care” – a practice that places deliberate attention on the beings, things, and sites that together foster long-term visions of collective life across generations and communities of humans and non-humans, as well as ever-evolving technologies and ecologies. With interdisciplinary humanities scholars and community leaders, along with a directed focus on our city of Milwaukee, our 2025-26 programming will offer a range of exploratory and participatory events that ask what possibilities arise when we attune ourselves, and attend to our worlds, in slowness and with care.
Here are some things to look forward to at C21 this year:
- State of the Humanities MKE: a panel discussion on how we can sustain, expand and care for the humanities across our city with Milwaukee-based humanities leaders from Marquette University, MSOE, MIAD, and Medical College Wisconsin
- Human Club: a new initiative with free field trips and gatherings around the city with your fellow humans, complete with a membership punch-card!
- Aesthetics, Art, & AI: programming across C21 and the Center for the Humanities at UW-Madison that examines ethical and aesthetic implications of computational creativity on the boundaries between human and machine-generated cultural production, with grant support from the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes
- The redesign and relaunch of our Story Cart, now a mobile enclosure that supports intimate conversations and offers community-based workshops on radical attention activism across Milwaukee, with grant support from the Wisconsin Institute for Citizenship and Civil Dialogue
- Our 6.5 Minutes With…C21 podcast series lives on, introducing concepts of slow care across disciplines, histories, and cultures
- Seven new research fellows come to the center from the UWM departments of Africa & African Diaspora Studies, Art & Design, English, History, Psychology, Women’s & Gender Studies, and UW-Superior’s department of Human Behavior, Justice, and Diversity
- Two collaboratory projects will offer public programming focusing on de-carceration and Muslim communities in Milwaukee, and four working groups will continue research on digital culture, critical Asian humanities studies, reproductive justice, and the medicalization of mental health
We hope one or more of these things spark your interest and we look forward to seeing you on campus and in our communities!
Sincerely,
Jennifer Johung Director, Center for 21st Century Studies