C21: Center for 21st Century Studies

Our last Story Cart zine is finally here! Created by Ladasia Bryant, this Story Cart Zine is a portable invitation to slow down. Within its pages is a series of creative, community-based exercises designed to help us notice, more deeply and more intentionally, the worlds we move through every day.

Attention Activism Toolkit, Vol. 2 continues where Vol. 1 left off, documenting the workshops and attention exercises of C21’s Story Cart: Attention. Developed through workshops led by C21’s Story Fellows (Symphony Swan, Adam Carr, and Madeleine Doelker-Berlin), the toolkit introduces attention activism, which Strother School of Radical Attention describes as a way “to push back against the fracking of human attention by coercive digital technologies.”

Inside, readers find guided activities that are completed alone or with others, requiring only minimal materials and inviting expansive reflection. They ask you to spend time at a museum, park, or library, using your imagination to explore and create with found objects; to listen to the rhythms of your body through a curated yoga flow with guest artist Matthew Lewis; to reflect on the embodied experience of protest; to collectively listen as a form of archiving memory and emotion; and to ground yourself in nature.

Check the link in our bio for a digital download, or come through the 9th floor lobby of Curtin Hall to grab a hard copy with some little extras (while supplies last).

Artist / educator

📢 Attention all UWM grad students! 📢
 
We’re dropping our 2026-27 call for grad-led public humanities programming early this year to maximize percolation time for the ideas you want to bring to life.

We welcome UWM Master’s & Doctoral students across all disciplines to submit proposals for public humanities programming that takes up our 2026–27 theme: Slow Action. 
 
How might the humanities help us enact organizing as a form of care? What does it look like to build actionable pathways that are anchored in shared values, yet open to change? How do attention and pace shape what’s possible as we face the most pressing challenges of our time?
 
We’re looking for programming that: 
    •    is rooted in humanities practices 
    •    is public-facing & accessible 
    •    is achievable by May 28, 2027
    •    can occur, be presented, or be distributed during C21’s Day of Action, a celebration of the Slow Action theme (ED May 2027)

 
The deadline to apply is Nov. 1, 2026. For more information and to apply, check out the link in our bio! College of Letters & Science

Catch C21’s Managing Director Katie Waddell on the Human Powered podcast from Wisconsin Humanities.

In 2025, C21 was awarded a grant from Wisconsin Humanities in support of public programs exploring the “attention economy.” Now entering the third year of C21’s SLOW theme cycle challenging “fast” culture with Slow Knowing, Slow Care, and Slow Action, Waddell talks with co-hosts Jen Rubin and Jessica Becker about “Attention Fracking,” what it means to be human, and how we are all profoundly woven into “global human existence.” 

Check the link in our bio to hear the episode.

C21’s work with attention activism put us on the map. Literally. We’re on the Strother School of Radical Attention’s Atlas of Attention Activism—a “digital database mapping diverse initiatives in ATTENTION ACTIVISM from around the world.”

Check out our work, along with a wildly diverse group of attention activists such as Clowns in NYC, Cache Me Outside (NY), The Institution of the United Civilists Assembly (CA), Pronoia Sound System (CA), Complementary Health Innovation Lab (FL), Attentional Rights and Liberties (MA), Forest Hills Mennonite Church (PA), Polaris Focus & Attentional Design (Canada), (Brazil, Les Bouquinistes de l’Attention (France), Laboratorij pažnje (Croatia), and Bonds, Creativity and Culture’ Research Group (Spain).

schoolofattention.org/atlas

Behind the scenes at C21 - June 2026

-Testing web imagery
-Milwaukee Public Library’s Civic Bites series with Mayor Cavalier Johnson
-Conference notes with logo doodles
-Shiny swag
-UWM Special Collections visit: Justseeds’ Poor People’s Campaign Portfolio (2017)
-Editing by collaging
-Random quilt scrap found on 9th floor (Does anyone recognize this? Why do we have it and what is its purpose?)
-Testing new archives

Our friends at Milwaukee Public Library are having lunch with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson this Saturday, and we’re all invited!

Have a meal with the community and be there for an interview with Mayor Johnson about the ways this moment in history has shaped our country and city, the personal meaning this moment holds for each of us, and the ways in which we can apply America’s founding ideal of engaged democracy locally today.

⏱️12:30-2:30p, June 27
📍MPL Mitchell Street Branch
🔗Learn more at https://mpl.libnet.info/event/16439107

See you there!

A digital download of the Envision zine just dropped via the link in our bio!

In April 2026, the Center for 21st Century Studies hosted its inaugural graduate-led public humanities program, “En-Vision: Toward a Q***r Ethics of Slow Care,” led by Isabella Fincher. The program explored creative practices and embodied experiences of slow care among individuals living with chronic illness and disability through an embodied writing workshop that combined mindfulness and creative writing.

Participants engaged with themes of slowing down, radical self-care, critical disability studies, and the cultivation of networks of mutual support and caregiving. As a part of the program, workshop participants contributed artwork and creative writing to a collaborative community zine, designed by Houa S. Vang and edited by Carly Davis and Ali Nowac, centered on a q***r ethics of care.

Check the link in our bio for a digital copy, or stop by the lobby on the 9th floor of Curtin Hall to nab a printed booklet (while supplies last).

We are excited to welcome, and welcome back, C21’s 2026–27 collaboratories and returning working groups.

C21's collaborative project funding provides a space to bring new, humanities-informed ideas and knowledge to many different audiences both on and off campus.