IHC series for 2013-14: The Value of Care

Recognizing that human interdependence is both enlivening

and precarious, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s
2013-14 series The Value of Care seeks to explore the
normative values and emotional investments of care. The
series will address the many ways that cultures have organized
themselves around this constant of human life, how they have
fostered the bonds of care that enable individuals and groups
to survive and thrive.

To respond to the needs of others and to rely on others are

twin conditions of fundamental human interdependence. The
Value of Care will consider how individual, group, and
institutional practices of care have the potential to legitimate
those whose needs are well-served, or to reinforce existing
social inequities and further disenfranchise those deprived of
care. Other potential topics include the ethical positions and
philosophical viewpoints that organize approaches to care; the
ways in which the politics of gender, race, class, and sexual
orientation structure caring practices and the perceptions of
caregivers; the interpersonal and psychosocial dynamics of
care; and care as a creative and transformative force.

The IHC seeks proposals for speakers and events about care.
Topics could include:

- historical formulations of care

- psychoanalytic explorations of care

- life-stages and care

- politics of care

- ethics of care, including bioethics and environmental ethics

- antipodes of care: indifference, coldness, refusal of care,
empathy fatigue

- care as pedagogical practice

- the labor of care

- the impact of media on care

- spatial design and care

- care of bodies, living and deceased

- vulnerable populations and care

- self-care

Please contact IHC Director Susan Derwin

(derwin@ihc.ucsb.edu) or Associate Director Emily Zinn
(ezinn@ihc.ucsb.edu) with your suggestions and ideas for
productive and creative collaborations.