Advancing Interdisciplinary Legal Scholarship since 1978
Interventions in Social Reproduction: Labor, Social Justice, and the Value of Human Life
2022-23 Conference Events: Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is the theme of the year-long conference hosted by the UB Gender Institute as a series of lectures, panel table discussions, and reading groups. The events will highlight the most recent feminist contributions and SRT developments as core concerns of political economy and social policy.
Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is a field that is experiencing renewed interest globally in a range of disciplines, from feminist legal theory to social policy (e.g. King's College London's Laws of Social Reproduction Project).
Grounded in global socialist feminist studies, SRT positions gendered and racialized divisions of labor, domesticity/public-private spheres, and feminist commons as core concerns of political economy and social policy.
This year-long conference consists of a series of events hosted by the Gender Institute and sponsored by The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. The events will highlight the most recent feminist contributions and developments in this area. Organized around six main events and a year-long associated reading group, topics concern feminist interventions in social reproduction on several levels — historical, methodological, and policy-making.
Speakers include Silvia Federici, Premilla Nadasen, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Alessandra Mezzadri, among others.
Conference Organizer
Carrie Tirado Bramen (UB Gender Institute)
Spring 2023 Events
Fall 2022 Events
SEPTEMBER 22, 2022
509 O’Brian Hall, North Campus
3:30 to 5:00 p.m. ET
Silvia Federici (Social Reproduction Theory Lecture)
SEPTEMBER 23, 2022
509 O’Brian Hall, North Campus
3:00 to 5:00 p.m. ET
New Books New Feminist Directions
Katja Praznik (UB Arts Management)
OCTOBER 27, 2022
Premilla Nadasen (Columbia University)
509 O’Brian Hall, North Campus
3:30 to 5:00 p.m. ET
Overview of Co-sponsored Events
Keynote Lecture 1: Silvia Federici, Thursday, September 22, 2022
The inaugural event of the Speaker Series will feature a keynote lecture by Silvia Federici, feminist activist, writer, scholar and teacher, who is one of the key figures among the group of feminists that spurred the new radical theorizing of social reproduction in the 1970s. In her keynote address, Federici will discuss the enduring relevance of social reproduction and how the theorizing of contradictions in this terrain are necessary for social movements dedicated to reorganizing everyday life and creating non-exploitative social relations.
Book Launch, Friday, September 23, 2022
Following the keynote address there will be a double book launch event focusing on Silvia Federici’s latest work Patriarchy of the Wage: Notes on Marx, Gender and Feminism and Katja Praznik’s book Artwork: Invisible Labor and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism.
Keynote Lecture 2: Premilla Nadasen, October 27, 2022
Professor of History at Barnard, Premilla Nadasen is the author of four books, most recently Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement, which is a new classic of history-from-below that reconstructs the work of mainly Black women domestic workers in the post-war period. Her keynote at UB will be based on her forthcoming book on social reproduction with Haymarket Press.
Panel 1: Social Reproduction and the Crisis of Housing in Buffalo, February 2023
This session aims to bring social reproduction home to Buffalo and the social reproductive struggle for housing justice. Along with schooling, medical care, child care and elder care, housing is a central concern of social reproduction and its academic study. This panel brings together three diverse scholars and activists with ties to struggles for housing rights, with diverse interests and expertise. Featuring Rahwa Ghirmatzion (Executive Director of PUSH Buffalo), Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University), India Walton (former Candidate for Mayor of Buffalo).
Panel 2: Social Reproduction from Majority World Perspectives, April 2023
Contemporary social reproduction debates are primarily focused upon the “crisis of care” in high income countries. Less attention has been paid to social reproduction in post-colonial and post-socialist contexts both theoretically and empirically. This panel highlights social reproduction research conducted by new and emerging scholars offering majority world/international perspectives. Featuring Alessandra Mezzadri (Senior Lecturer, Author of The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation, and Garments Made in India), Hannah Schling (ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow), Yige Dong (Assistant Professor in Sociology and GGS), and Gabriella Nassif (Doctoral candidate in Global Gender and Sexuality Studies).
Panel 3: Global History and Culture. Graduate Student Work-in-Progress
In coordination with the Gender Institute's lecture series, graduate students from multiple departments and disciplines will be holding a reading group on Social Reproduction Theory throughout the 2022- 2023 academic year. The reading group will culminate in a roundtable that will allow graduate students to share their related works in progress.