Knowledge Share Description

This knowledge share traces the history of women’s struggles, beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, against the capitalist enclosure of their lands, territories, and bodies. We will look at how the destruction of the commons restricted communities’ ability to forage freely, severing access to ancestral foodways and medicinal plants, and how this directly impacted practices of herbalism and collective health. The knowledge share will focus on the collective efforts women have made to protect their environments, sustain non-destructive forms of agriculture, and preserve shared systems of nourishment and healing. We will also examine how, as in the past, contemporary forms of witch-hunting emerge in response to women’s defense of land, traditional agricultural practices, and plant knowledge against the encroachment of mining, agribusiness, and other extractive industries.

Date: Sunday October 19, 2025
Time: 3:00pm – 5:00PM EST
Cost: FREE for Living Library hbc members | Sliding Scale $45, $65, $90 for Non-members

We will explore:

• the historical struggles of women in the 16th and 17th centuries against capitalist enclosures of land, territory, and bodies

• the connections between women’s collective resistance and the defense of ecological environments

• non-destructive agricultural and food provisioning practices developed and maintained through women’s organizing

• the role of witch-hunts, past and present, as mechanisms of social control against women’s autonomy and ecological stewardship.

• connections between historical and contemporary struggles over land, agriculture, and women’s bodies.

• how mining, agribusiness, and other capitalist enterprises continue to reproduce forms of enclosure and dispossession.

• the importance of women’s knowledge systems and communal practices for sustainable futures.

• resistance movements across time and geography.

• how women’s defense of land and traditional agriculture informs broader movements for environmental and social justice today.

Who this Knowledge Share is For

• Herbalists & Care workers
  Those interested in understanding the historical roots of herbalism, how enclosures disrupted access to medicinal plants, and how women preserved plant knowledge in the face of repression.

• Farmers & Food Growers
  People committed to non-destructive, community-based agriculture who want to learn from the strategies women developed to defend land and sustain collective nourishment.

• Environmental & Land Defenders
  Activists and community members engaged in protecting land, water, and ecosystems who want to ground their struggles in historical continuity and women’s resistance.

• Feminists & Gender Justice Advocates
  Anyone interested in how the control of women’s bodies, labor, and knowledge has been tied to land dispossession and capitalist expansion.

• Historians & Learners of Radical Histories
  Students, educators, and community members eager to uncover histories often erased—especially those that link witch-hunts, enclosures, and resistance.

• Community Organizers & Movement Builders
  Those working in food sovereignty, climate justice, or social justice movements who want to weave historical lessons into contemporary organizing.

• Curious Seekers
  Anyone drawn to the intersections of history, land, plants, and resistance who wishes to reflect on how these struggles shape our present and future.

Cost

$45 - low income

$65 - standard

$90 - pay-it-forward (if you have financial abundance, this is our pay-it-forward option to fund our full tuition scholarships)

For more information on sliding scale please check out this amazing work!

The zoom link will be sent upon registration. Recording will be available for 30 days.

Please apply here for a scholarship.

or access this knowledge share for free by enrolling as a member of the Living Library

Living Library HBC

By becoming a member you have access to this live knowledge share in addition to the archive of knowledge shares. Enroll as a monthly or annual member

We invite you to become a member of our Living Library, Herban Cura’s digital school & archive. The Living Library, is a subscription giving access to over 200 hours of  present and past knowledge shares by herbalists, wisdom holders, professors, land stewards, seed keepers, and investigators spanning Indigenous horse connections & dark sky wisdom, to seaweed medicine & more.

Accessibility Information

Virtual Gathering

*ASR (automated) captioning provided

The knowledge share zoom link will be sent out immediately upon purchase, along with any other necessary information.

Sunday October 19, 2025

3:00pm - 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time

Class will be recorded and available for 30 days. This means you can join from anywhere in the world.

Facilitator

Silvia Federici is a feminist activist, writer, and a teacher. In 1972 she was one of the cofounders of the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the Wages For Housework campaign internationally. In the 1990s, after a period of teaching and research in Nigeria, she was active in the anti-globalization movement and the U.S. anti–death penalty movement. She is one of the co-founders of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, an organization dedicated to generating support for the struggles of students and teachers in Africa against the structural adjustment of African economies and educational systems. From 1987 to 2005 she taught international studies, women studies, and political philosophy courses at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. All through these years she has written books and essays on philosophy and feminist theory, women’s history, education and culture, and more recently the worldwide struggle against capitalist globalization and for a feminist reconstruction of the commons.