December 12, 2023

Last year my predecessor Carrie Tirado Bramen and Deputy Director Jo Freudenheim initiated a new era for the Gender Institute by actively pursuing substantial external funding. When I took over the Institute this past summer, I took up this challenge, which has now paid off more substantially than we could possibly have predicted. We developed the Mellon Foundation’s “Communities of Care” grant as a joint project between the Gender Institute and the Center for Disability Studies, under the direction of Michael Rembis. The grant emerged from conversations among faculty, particularly those involved in the Institute’s Social Reproduction series last year, and community allies concerned about the state of care workers and those they care for in Buffalo. Jo, Mike and I are co-PIs for the three-year grant, which is funded for a generous 2.5 million dollars.

Over the next year we will be hiring a team that is committed to exploring the everyday ways in which poor, racialized, and disabled people navigate and negotiate living, working, and accessing vital healthcare needs in Buffalo. Our definition of “care” extends outside of formal medical settings to include the vital care that takes place in homes and neighborhoods. The project also considers care as forms of labor that have been gendered and racialized, with implications for the labor movement. Our primary goal is to provide a voice for those vulnerable Buffalonians who have not received sustained attention from policymakers and academics. We will do this through oral histories, artistic productions, and writing workshops centered in the community. Here on campus, we will enhance existing course offerings with small grants and promote research in the areas of disability and care work from an intersectional perspective.

I wish I could tell you who is on the “Communities of Care” team, but we have only just started the process of identifying and hiring the project participants. The department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies is currently searching for a faculty member in the areas of disability studies, gender, and race. Early in the Spring semester we will hire an administrative assistant to help manage the grant and several graduate student assistants. By the Fall semester they will be joined by two postdoctoral scholars and a community liaison. Community members will also be included at all stages, including as part of our advisory committee. And look out for visiting speakers and symposia in the coming year, which are an integral part of the project. This grant will not only strengthen the work of the Gender Institute and the Center for Disability Studies, but it will help move UB towards the goal of becoming a top 25 public research university. It is notable that a humanities project has received this support, demonstrating that there are many paths to top 25.

Rest assured that the excellent programming that the Gender Institute produces will continue during the grant period. We have already started to develop a new series on “Sex, Gender and the Natural World” for next year. And we have a full line-up of Feminist Research Alliance talks, New Books/New Feminist Directions, and Signature Lecture events for Spring. We will be capping off the Spring semester with a Women in Leadership Reception in May, where we plan to celebrate the work of former Gender Institute directors. Keep your eye out for these events in the coming months. And please join us as we begin to launch “Communities of Care.”

Victoria W. Wolcott  is a Professor of History and Director of UB's Gender Institute. Her current research investigates the life and work of a Black pacifist and athlete during the cold war. This will culminate in a microhistory tentatively titled, The Embodied Resistance of Eroseanna Robinson: Athleticism and Activism in the Cold War Era. She is also editing and contributing to a collection of interdisciplinary essays on utopianism for SUNY Press’s “Humanities to the Rescue” series, Utopian Imaginings: Saving the Future in the Present.