In the Communities of Care project, we focus on communities of care in Buffalo to think with study participants about the everyday ways that those impacted by disability, both caregivers and those receiving care, including poor, racialized, and disabled people, navigate and negotiate living, working, and accessing vital healthcare and other needs.
We use “communities of care” to extend our understanding of care networks beyond formalized healthcare settings to include the vital care that takes place in the home, in neighborhoods, and in other settings. We also consider care as work – both in its more formal settings and in the informal spaces in which it most often occurs.
We are exploring the ways in which this work has been/is gendered and racialized and the implications that this has for the formation of caregiving/receiving relationships and worker organizing.
We are creating a permanent digital archive and exhibition space made available to community members, students, and researchers of all levels. We are bringing together community people, artists, and scholars involved in giving and receiving care to share their stories through interviews, creative writing, memoir, and art making, as well as other approaches that interact with the “communities of care” theme.
The Communities of Care project amplifies the voices of those whose stories are not often heard, both the caregivers and those receiving care; and will focus on the intersection of disability, race, and gender.
RECENT NATIONAL NEWS
April 17, 2025 Teen Vogue quotes Michael Rembis, associate professor in the Department of History and director of the Center for Disability Studies, in an article about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments that Americans “addicted” to opioids, antidepressants and stimulants should be sent to “wellness farms” to be “re-parented.”
April 15, 2025 Salon quotes Michael Rembis, associate professor of history and director of the Center for Disability Studies, in a story about how Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts are making it harder for people with disabilities to live in their communities. “It’s about shifting priorities and moving away from social support and things that people need to live their lives toward other priorities,” said Dr. Michael Rembis, a history professor and director of the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo. “The rhetoric is all in the name of cost-savings and efficiency, but it hasn't really been shown through any studies that I'm aware of that this is a more efficient or cost effective way to manage care.”
