Past Events

Explore all of our past events!

Seminars

Seminar Series

Working Papers Seminar Series 2025-2026

Check out our 2025-2026 WPS series. Brought to you with generous support from Duke University’s Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI).

Working Papers Seminar Series 2024-2025

Check out our 2024-2025 WPS series. Brought to you with generous support from a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant.

Working Papers Seminar Series 2023-2024

The experiment of sharing research continues. One or two presenters share original unpublished papers beforehand and two respondents offer insights and reflections. Working papers seminars series are open to the general public upon signing up. The events in February, April, and May are sponsored by CLACS

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Water and Care — Working Papers Seminar

September 2, 2026

Join us for a Working Papers Seminar on Water and Care, featuring two papers that explore the entanglement of care, ecology, and extraction in coastal and deep-sea environments.

Care and Territory

Join us for the last session in our Working Papers Seminar series! This time featuring two working papers on community, care, and territory in Mexico: one tracing collective care practices across Cerro Tepepolco and the chinampas of Xochimilco, expanding care beyond the human to encompass land, water, and biological diversity, and another examining how anarcho-magonista women sustained the Mexican Revolution through emotional labor and mutual aid. Response by Holly Worthen (Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca).

Friday, April 24, 2026
12:00-2:00 PM (EDT)
Online (Zoom – Translated captioning available)
Registration free but required

Ancestral Care

Join our second-to-last Working Papers Seminar with Evan Auguste (CUNY) and Nadège Robertson (Foundation Espoir) as we explore Lakou Tanama — healing circles rooted in African and Taino worldviews that invoke ancestral memory and communal care to support Haitian communities amid crisis, reclaiming political agency and challenging narratives that pathologize Haitian identity. Comments by Deborah Jenson (Duke University).

Friday, April 17, 2026
12:00-1:15 PM (EDT)
Online (Zoom – Translated captioning available)
Registration free but required

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Care in Practice

Care in Practice Series

Composting Theory: Ecological Care in Practice 2025-2026

A hands-on workshop series in collaboration with the Duke Campus Farm, “Composting Theory: Ecological Care in Practice” explores ecological care through feminist and posthumanist readings, soil practices, and collective reflection. Sessions are scheduled Saturdays from 10 am to 12 pm ET.

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Everyday Ecologies: Working with Soil Time

A conversation and an opportunity to get up close to the living (and dying) post-plantation soils at the Duke Campus Farm, and to think together about the limits of repair. We’ll read an article by Anna Krzywoszynska and learn practical techniques for cultivating the Piedmont’s notoriously heavy clay soils.

️ Saturday, April 25, 2026
10:00AM-12:00PM
Duke Campus Farm
Light breakfast included
Registration is free but required

Breakdown: Thinking and Making Compost Together

This session centers compost as both material process and theoretical problem, exploring decay, waste, labor, and transformation through collective compost-making and discussion.

️ Saturday, March 28, 2026
10:00AM-12:00PM
Duke Campus Farm
Light breakfast included
Registration is free but required

Cultured: Edible Experiments with More-than-Human Worlds

A conversation on the intimate, interspecies connections made possible by the everyday work of fermentation, in a workshop bringing science, critical theory, and community together. Participants will work co-create living kombucha or sauerkraut ferments to bring home.

️ Saturday, February 21, 2026
10:00AM-12:00PM
Duke Campus Farm
Light breakfast included
Registration is free but required

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Care Conversations

Care Conversation Series

Care Conversations Series 2025-2026: New Books

The Care Conversations Series invites leading scholars to discuss new books that reframe care across labor, gender, race, disability, and social justice. Each event pairs the author with a Duke interlocutor for cross-disciplinary dialogue. The Fall 2025 series will take place in Bay 4, Smith Warehouse, and is co-sponsored by the Revaluing Care Lab and campus partners.

Care Conversations Series 2021-2022: Visualizing Care

Making care more visible and defamiliarizing the naturalized representations of care. Cycle of Workshops funded by Duke Humanities Unbounded from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022

Care Conversations Series 2020-2021: Care Across the Board

Between 2020 and 2021, we organized a series of public online conversations focused on care. Topics varied and we examined issues such as post-work, queer kinships, vaccine hesitancy, global labor standards

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Making Care Work — Book Conversation with Nancy Folbre

September 10, 2026

Please join us on September 10, 12-1:30 EDT, for a conversation with Nancy Folbre on her recent book!

Book Conversation with Wendy Harcourt

Join us for a conversation with scholar and RCGE Board Member Wendy Harcourt about her new open-access book Conundrums of Care: Feminist Entanglements in Critical Development Studies. Responses from fellow Board Members Arturo Escobar (UNC), Felwine Sarr (Duke University), and Suzanne Bergeron (University of Michigan).
Wednesday, April 29 / 10:00-11:00AM (EDT) / Online (Zoom – Translated captioning available) / Registration free but required

Book Conversation with James McMaster

Join us for a conversation with writer and scholar James McMaster about his new book Racial Care: On Asian American Suffering and Survival. Through this work, McMaster examines the forms of care that Asian Americans have taken up to survive racialized suffering under neoliberal capitalism and white supremacy, showing how care can both sustain life and extract it from those who perform it. At the Care Lab, Smith Warehouse, Bay 4.

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Talks

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Gender History in the Time of Gender Ideology

We invite you to the annual Anne Firor Scott Lecture in Women’s and Gender History!

Thursday, March 19, 2026
5:00-6:30PM
Pink Parlor, East Duke Building
Light dinner offered
Registration free but required

Durba Mitra: Seminar & Talk

Feminist historian Durba Mitra will give a talk on “Protest as Care” and present during a seminar her manuscript in progress “The Future That Was: Feminist Thought in Decolonizing World”

Nancy Folbre: Seminar & Talk

Nancy Folbre will give a seminar on her manuscript-in-progress “Accounting for Care,” as well as public talk, entitled “Valuing Care: Time, Money, and Capabilities.” Both events will be in person at the Revaluing Care Lab at the FHI in Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, C106.

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Conferences

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Fourth Global Carework Summit: “Histories and Futures of Care” (2025)

5-7 June 2025, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Cuarto Encuentro Global de Trabajo de Cuidado: “Historias y futuros del cuidado” (2025)

Desde el 5 al 7 de junio, 2025. Universidad de Duke, Durham, Carolina del Norte

“Contesting Care” Conference (2021)

Conference organized by Duke University & University of Exeter on June 30 and July 1 2021

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