Trump’s America? Disquiet Campus?
Marginalized College Students, Faculty, and Staff Reflect on Learning, Working, Living, and Engaging
CALL FOR ESSAY SUBMISSIONS from Students, Faculty, and Staff for a special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color.
Submission Deadline: October 1, 2017
Your voice, your experiences, and your contributions are critical to Women, Gender, and Families of Color. At this time, we are soliciting essay submissions from college and university students, faculty members, and staff persons for a special issue focused on the meaning of learning, working, living, and engaging on college campuses in the current social, political, economic, and cultural climate. We are seeking a diversity of perspectives, especially those who identity as part of marginalized and minoritized populations.
Our journal, Women, Gender, and Families of Color is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed biennial publication that centers the study of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American women, gender, and families. Yet, our ability to produce this scholarly journal rests on the ability of developing, new, and established researchers to fully and freely engage in their intellectual environments. Many among our readership have expressed concern about the challenges of participating as students and scholars on college campuses at this contemporary moment. For this special issue, we are interested in exploring how contemporary social, political, cultural, and economic trends may disrupt the ability of campus citizens—students, faculty, and staff—to fully engage in learning, work, service, and other campus engagement activities.
As many of you know, few, if any, higher education institutions have created diverse and equitable learning and professional environments. Campuses have persistently struggled to create representative student, faculty, and staff compositions; achieve equitable rates of retention and degree completion; and produce inclusive and welcoming learning and workplace environments. Yet, while some progress has been made, some assert that recent trends may be slowing efforts and making it more difficult, especially for those most marginalized, to fully participate in classrooms, workplaces, research networks, and other forums of scholarly development. The march of white supremacists at the University of Virginia, revocation of Deferred Action for Children of Aliens (DACA), a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, passage of campus gun-carry laws, police militarization and violence, increased voter restrictions, and steady rises in inflation, represent a political, social, economic, and cultural reality that have heightened attention and distress on college campuses. Those most marginalized—by race/ethnicity, disabilities, nationality, citizenship status, religion, gender expression, sexuality, and class, for example—may feel this more than others.
Many readers and past authors have asked that we take a moment and consider a special issue on this reality and its meaning for students, faculty, and staff in higher education. Specifically, this issue is a response to requests that we offer a forum for understanding the current period and its relationship to thinking, learning, sharing ideas, working, engaging, research, and publishing.
We are interested in submissions that reflect on your experiences as a student, faculty member, or staff person in one or more of the following:
- In the classroom and other teaching and learning spaces.
- In residence halls and student housing, recreational facilities, and social areas.
- Engagement with peers and colleagues in any setting.
- On social media and other public engagement activities.
- Research agenda, priorities, and scholarly productivity.
- Ability to focus on studies and/or professional work-related expectations.
- Campus and community participation.
Submissions are due October 1, 2017 to wgfc@ku.edu and should include the following:
- 5-10 double-spaced pages (1250-2500 words)
- A 20-word biography that indicates your identities and campus role (undergraduate, graduate student, post-doc, lecturer, faculty member, administrator, staff)
- Submissions should not include identifying information of others.
For more information, visit our website: wgfc.ku.edu or email the editors at wgfc@ku.edu
