Silvia Federici is an Italian feminist theorist, activist, and scholar. Born in Parma, Italy in 1942, Federici came to the United States in 1967 to study philosophy at the University of Buffalo. She has held teaching positions at several universities worldwide, including as Professor Emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University and at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Oriented around a Marxist feminist critique of capitalism, her scholarship develops from the 1960s anti-colonial movement, the civil rights movement, the student movement, and the autonomist Marxist movement. Federici is best known for developing a new political subjectivity and strategy that works to make visible women's domestic and reproductive labor as the foundation of capitalism.
Federici's prolific work and profound activism is global by nature and design. Publishing and organizing around questions of colonialism, capital punishment, immigration and emigration, globalization and global market inequality, food politics, elder care and capitalism, and academic freedom in Africa, Federici always engages her inquiry alongside and through an international politics of race, gender, and class.
In 1972, Federici co-founded the International Feminist Collective as a global organization based in a commitment to a new Marxist feminist ideology that politicized around wages for housework. Growing into an eponymously named movement, the Wages for Housework movement launched campaigns across Europe and the United States that based a critique of capitalism in women's invisibility as workers in the Marxist imaginary. Arguing that capitalism rests on unpaid domestic labor for the reproduction of the workforce as well as the devaluation of these reproductive activities to cut the cost of labor power, the grassroots movement made it possible to understand that capitalist production relies on the production of a particular type of worker, and therefore a particular type of family, sexuality, and procreation. In protesting in the streets and demanding wages for their labor, women ignited debates in their cities surrounding the sexual division of labor, economic dependence on men, and "women's work."
In 1973, Silvia Federici met her partner, American political philosopher and Marxist George Caffentzis. Caffentzis, who held a professorship in philosophy at the University of Southern Maine prior to his retirement, is an activist and scholar with roots in the American civil rights and student anti-war movements. In 1974, Caffentzis was a founder of Zerowork, a journal and collective of political activists focused on addressing the crisis of capitalism in the international working class struggle post WWII. Caffentzis brought Wages for Housework's feminist critique of unwaged work to an analysis of class history, engaging with questions of work and refusal to mobilize the political concept of zerowork. Following the theoretical split of Zerowork in the late 1970s, Caffentzis founded the Midnight Notes Collective as part of the anti-nuclear movement in New York City. Connecting the energy crisis to class struggle, Midnight Notes expands on critiques of Zerowork and the accumulation process in relation to technology, unwaged labor, and slavery.
Collaborators as well as partners, Caffentzis and Federici co-founded the Committee for Academic Freedom of Africa in the late 1980s to confront issues of global education and support students and teachers against structural adjustment. Always pairing theory and activism in her diverse interests and academic career, in the 1990s Federici founded the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project as an arm of her feminist critique of capital punishment. She is also a member of Midnight Notes Collective.
Federici's most well-known work, her 2004 book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, has been translated into several languages. Analyzing the development of "witch" against the rise of capitalism, Federici investigates patriarchy, colonialism, and violence by foregrounding the woman's body as disappeared by Marxist theories of capital accumulation and the development of capitalism and the modern state. Her 2012 book, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, collects essays and writings growing from the Wages for Housework movement and subsequent theories of social reproduction. Critiquing "immaterial labor" and "affective labor," she argues that the fight against reproductive work is "ground zero" because it is the work in which the contradictions inherent in "alienated labor" are most exclusive. With topics including the international restructuring of reproductive work and its effects on the sexual division of labor, the globalization of care work and sex work, and the crisis of elder care, the essays argue against dehumanization and towards learning to reconstruct the world as a space of nurturing, creativity, and care.
Silvia Federici lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her most recent book, Wages for Housework: The New York Committee 1972-1977: History, Theory, Documents, was published in 2017.
This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of Silvia Federici, Italian-American scholar and activist; co-founder of the International Feminist Collective; and organizer with the International Wages for Housework campaign. Federici is Professor Emerita of Social Sciences at Hofstra University where her research focused around questions of colonialism, capital punishment, immigration and emigration, globalization and global market inequality, food politics, elder care and capitalism, and academic freedom in Africa. The collection documents Federici's academic career, personal life, and feminist activism. The collection spans from 1922-2023 (bulk 1970-2023) and is arranged into 15 series.
Please note that this finding aid was reorganized in January 2026.
Series 1, BIOGRAPHICAL, 1991 - 2016, includes awards, interviews of Federici, and mementos from friends. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 2, CAREER DEVELOPMENT, 1980 - 2019, includes an application for promotion to professor at Hofstra University, flyers for lectures and protests, and programs for conferences attended by Federici. Also included is Federici's Ph.D. dissertation, "The Development of Lukacs' Realism," from the State University of New York, Buffalo. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 3, CORRESPONDENCE, 1971 - 2018, contains personal and professional correspondence from various senders including Alessandro Scotto, Elisa Servin, Wamba Dia Wamba, George Caffentzis (Federici's Husband), and Federici's students. Topics include Papua New Guinea, human rights in Kenya, Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, and Wages for Housework. This series is arranged alphabetically by sender or recipient's first name.
Series 4, WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK, 1971 - 2016, captures Federici's work as a co-founder of the International Feminist Collective – a global feminist social movement that began in 1972 in Padua, Italy. The collective was a driving force behind the International Wages for Housework Campaign, which was formed to raise awareness of how housework and childcare are the base of all industrial work and to stake the claim that these unavoidable tasks should be compensated as paid wage labor. Materials include clippings, newsletters, and print material specific to Wages for Housework such as "All Work and No Pay: Women, Housework, and the Wages Due," and "Prime Time: An Independent Feminist Journal."
Also included are documents and print material related to Lotta Femminista, the first major feminist organization to form in the Trivento region of Italy in 1971. Lotta Femminista would coordinate the initial meetings of the International Feminist Collective in 1972 which formed the basis for the Wages for Housework movement internationally. Following a split in 1973, one segment of the group would adapt the program of the Wages for Housework international campaign and rename itself Lotta Feminista per il salario al lavoro domestico (Feminist struggle for wages for housework). The group organized many important protests and initiatives in campaigns for abortion access, against sexual assault and domestic violence and to demand pay for various forms of unwaged reproductive labor across Italy throughout the 1970s. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 5, COMMITTEE FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN AFRICA, 1979 - 2017, highlights Federici's work for the organization that she and her partner, George Caffentzis, formed in the early 1990s. The Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA) was an initiative of North American and African academics, most of whom were forced from teaching positions in African universities due to escalating government repression, declining pay, or some combination of both. CAFA helped bring attention to the underlying causes in the structural adjustment programs of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the defunding of universities, ending subsidies to students, and in general commodifying education. CAFA argued that the assault on the African educational system was key to a new neoliberal division of labor internationally and to processes of financial and intellectual recolonization. Materials include articles, newsletters, and print material from Africa and Asia and the Association for Concerned Africa Scholars. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 6, BRING MUMIA HOME, 1995 - 2013, captures Federici's interest in the movement to release American political activist, journalist, and prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. The organization's website states, "The movement for Mumia Abu-Jamal is an international network that has taken to the streets for over thirty years to stop two state-sponsored executions, organized to overturn his death sentence, and recently sponsored a landmark court case that forced the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to administer treatment for his Hepatitis C." Federici's early involvement in this movement led to her co-founding the Radical Philosophy Association in 1995 to support Abu-Jamal's liberation and the broader anti-death penalty movement. Materials in this series include newspaper articles by and about Abu-Jamal, protest flyers, and a resolution draft from the Radical Philosophy Association for Mumia Abu-Jamal. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 7, RADICAL PHILOSOPHY ASSOCIATION'S ANTI-DEATH PENALTY PROJECT, 1983 - 2005, notes Federici's work on this campaign she established to critique capital punishment and abolish the death penalty in the United States and internationally. In part, this project was inspired by her early work on the Bring Mumia Home movement. Materials in this series include clippings, event flyers, newsletters, and related syllabi. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 8, ANTI-GLOBALIZATION ACTIVISM, 1988 - 2021, Federici's scholarship and activism links feminist theory with critiques of capitalism, arguing that globalization intensifies women's exploitation through unpaid reproductive labor, precarity, and migration. She views these struggles as central to anti-capitalist movements, and advocates for a feminist reconstruction of the commons against capitalist exploitation and patriarchal violence. Materials in this series include "Economic Justice News" magazines, "Bank Check Quarterly" newsletters, and research articles on globalization, economy, war, capitalism, labor, education, and immigration. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 9, UNIVERSITY ACTIVISM (GENERAL), 1972 - 2015, notes Federici's critique of the corporatization of universities and promotion of collective knowledge production, seeing it as vital for building a new societal structure. Materials in this series include flyers and research materials from and about protests at universities as well as various magazines. Of particular note is a series of project files from Edu-Factory, "a transnational mailing list centered around university transformations, knowledge production and forms of conflict, in which nearly 500 activists, students and researchers the world over have taken part from the beginning" (Toward a Global Autonomous University, 0). This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 10, TEACHING, 1987-2011, includes syllabi, exam questions, and lecture notes for various courses created and taught by Federici. Courses of note include "Feminist Perspectives in the Third World," "Radical Thought," and "African Contributions to Western Civilization." This series is arranged alphabetically by course title.
Series 11, WRITINGS BY FEDERICI, 1970-2016, includes typed and annotated drafts of articles, books, and talks, by Federici, as well as editorship files and personal writings. Titles include "Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism," "Caliban and the Witch," and "Why Feminists Should Oppose Capital Punishment." This series is arranged alphabetically by project type then by title.
Series 12, WRITINGS BY OTHERS, 1970-2009, includes typed and annotated drafts of articles by authors such as Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Maria Mies, and Ariel Salleh. Titles include "I am a Woman and a Human: a Marxist-Feminist Critique of Intersectionality Theory," "Notes on Dialectics: Hegel and Marxism," and "Women, Food, and Global Trade." This series is arranged alphabetically by title of work.
Series 13, PHOTOGRAPHS, 1970-2017, includes photos of Federici's family and international trips as well as demonstrations and special events. This series is arranged alphabetically by subject.
Series 14, PRINT MATERIAL, 1963-2020, includes bound/published books, journals, and pamphlets by Federici and other feminist authors and organizations. Titles include "'Care Work' and the Commons," "Midnight Notes Collective," and "Women of Europe." This series is arranged alphabetically by title.
Series 15, OVERSIZE, 1922-2019, includes oversize newspapers and posters related to feminist activism and presentations by Federici. Titles include "The Debt Economy and the Production of the Commons," "The Marxist Education Project," and "Student Debt: The Bigger Picture." This series is arranged alphabetically by title.
Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Silvia Federici papers, Ms-2017-023, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
This collection is arranged into 15 series.
There are no restrictions on access for analog materials, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested. Advance notice is required to view born-digital records. Born-digital materials in this collection may not have been reformatted yet. Researchers may request access to copies by contacting the John Hay Library with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed to hay@brown.edu.
Gift of Silvia Federici beginning in 2016.