Speakers Series presents "Who Cares? Why We Should Care About Those Who Care"

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Engaged Citizenship Common Experience (ECCE) Speakers Series presents “Who Cares? Why We Should Care About Those Who Care”. The event will feature Eileen Boris, Hull Professor and Chair of the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she directs the Center for Research on Women and Social Justice.

WHEN: Wed., Oct. 26, 2011 at 7 p.m.

WHERE: Sangamon Auditorium lobby, located on the second floor of the Public Affairs Center (PAC)

DETAILS: Shedding light on the themes from the book and film "The Help", Professor Eileen Boris will address work central to the maintenance of daily life, what feminist theorists call reproductive labor. How did we come to a system of care that relies upon the minimum wage labor of immigrant and U.S. born women of color and the unpaid labor of wives, mothers, and daughters? What are the bonds of care, how do we pay for such labor, and what is our responsibility to care about those who care? Boris argues that we must revalue reproductive labor and offers ways this can be accomplished.

An interdisciplinary historian, she specializes in women’s labors in the home and other workplaces and on gender, race, work, and the welfare state. Her forthcoming book on the how home care workers, mostly women of color, became the new face of the labor movement brings together concerns of the home as workplace, the valuing of women’s labors, the connection between public and private, the ways that state policy reinforces inequality, and the failure of welfare reform.

This event is co-sponsored by the UIS Women and Gender Studies Department and Sociology /Anthropology Department. For a list of other Speakers Series events, visit http://illinois.edu/goto/speakerseries.