Social distance. Compassion fatigue. Enshittification. Goblin mode.
Such neologisms are totems of post-pandemic culture, signifying the tandem threats of apathy, antipathy, and growing precarity. If the 2010s were the decade of “move fast and break things,” the 2020s are arguably the decade of surviving the wreck. Amidst these pressing concerns, the Center for 21st Century Studies activated “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.
In year two of SLOW, our 3-year thematic arc wherein we explored and enacted slower-paced embodied modes of kinship and situation, we asked: How might the short-term efficiency models that dominate our personal and political landscapes feed ideologies of zero-sum competition and unchecked disruption? Do the humanities offer an antidote to the anti-social turn? Can communities succeed where institutions have failed? As we continue to test the boundaries of human innovation, is our tech a tool or a trap, and why does it matter? Can we foment a culture of repair by moving purposefully and building things?
With interdisciplinary humanities scholars and community leaders, and a directed focus on our city of Milwaukee, our 2025-26 programming offered 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.
C21’s Slow Care programming was supported in part by the Wisconsin Institute for Citizenship & Civil Dialogue and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.