Call for Papers - Knowledges Of Emancipation: Narratives of Resistance and the Amplification of Global Majority Voices
CfP
Knowledges Of Emancipation: Narratives of Resistance and the Amplification of Global Majority Voices
Youmna Deiri, Ph.D.
Texas A&M International University
Maha Bashri, Ph.D.
United Arab Emirates University
The Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies (JECS), a U.S.-based international interdisciplinary journal, is currently inviting submissions for a special issue that spotlights the narratives and experiences of scholars from the Global South. JECS is dedicated to widely disseminating comprehensive research that spans a variety of disciplines, each distinctively linked to aspects of ethnicity and culture, encompassing theoretical, methodological, and empirical studies. The special issue seeks to magnify the voices of scholars from the Global South and Diaspora. By doing so, we aim to enhance the reach and impact of the unique perspectives of the Global Majority.
The main objective of this issue is to cultivate an environment that encourages candid and open dialogue. In this space, scholars from the Global South and Diaspora can openly share their experiences and challenges of navigating through academic environments that are often steeped in various forms of hegemony, whether cultural, economic, or political. We are interested in understanding their strategies for carving out pockets of joy, life, and self-sovereignty amid adversity. Rather than adhering to traditional colonial academic structures and western-centric knowledge production, our focus is directed towards fostering community-based creativity and knowledge.
Through this, we aim to demonstrate that acts of radical self-love and the creation of personal spaces constitute a form of activism and revolution, contributing to a curriculum that benefits our future generations. This approach also encourages a distinctive form of activism that doesn't need to align with traditional colonial paradigms.
Invitation to Scholars, Activists, Educators, and More
In this invitation, we are reaching out to interdisciplinary scholars, activists, educators, artists, healers, and dream workers who challenge colonial structures and create nurturing spaces of joy, love, and life. We emphasize the cultivation of a curriculum based on self-sovereignty, community intimacy, and self-love as revolutionary acts, allowing the Global Majority to connect and converse on their own terms.
We are particularly interested in featuring content that explores the multifaceted realities of academics belonging to the Global Majority and Diaspora, shedding light on our curriculum as an active form of resistance.
Guiding Questions for Submissions
Our primary inquiry is: How might the landscape change if we, as academics from the Global South, the Global Majority, and Diaspora, shifted our focus from catering to colonial systems and structures towards our aspirations, and the establishment of deeper connections within ourselves, our communities, and the wider diaspora and Global Majority communities? This question transcends geographical confines and academic disciplines, extending its reach to those marginalized and muted within the academic sphere.
We are looking to explore the following guiding questions:
- What narratives would we like to share among ourselves as scholars of the Global South and Diaspora?
- What are the teaching strategies we use to educate our future generations about the pain of displacement and resistance against colonial academic structures?
- What stories about ourselves do we wish to share with our intimate communities, families, ancestors, and descendants?
- What type of spaces would we construct if we were able to disregard colonial standards?
- How does the colonial structure of academia seek to alienate Global Majority communities from one another, and how does it explore the intimate impact on the lives of academics under these epistemologies of division?
- Historically, colonial structures have been known to extend their imperial powers through Global Majority proxies, if such practices do manifest in academic spaces how can they be resisted and/or expelled?
- Amidst the pain of different forms of hegemony, how do we claim self-sovereignty, and what are some tenets of your curriculum for healing and joy?
Suggested Theoretical Framework
We suggest using the following theoretical frameworks for your submissions:
- Postcolonial Theory/Representation (Said, 1978; Bhabha, 1983)
- Subaltern Studies (Spivak, 1988)
- Decoloniality (Mignolo, 2000)
- Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 1968)
- Cultural Studies (Hall,1989)
- Radical Love as a Revolutionary Act (Belle, 2024, hooks 2014)
- Critical Race Theory in Education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995)
- Borderlands: La frontera (Anzaldúa, G., 1987).
- Audre Lorde (1982, 1984, 1989)
- Ethnographies of the Particular (Lila Abu-Lughod, 1991, 2008)
- Indigenous Methodologies Indigenous Methodologies Kovach, 2008; Wilson 2009; Smith, Tuck, 2009)
- Tribal Critical Race Theory & Self Determination (Brayboy, 2005)
- Decolonizing the Mind (Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1986).
Multilingual Submissions Encouraged
We extend a warm welcome to multilingual scholars of the Global Majority and/or Diaspora wishing to submit a translingual text or manuscripts that weave named languages with English. To prepare our editorial team, please inform us of the language you plan to use in your submission.
We also welcome unconventional forms of academic writing, including poetic inquiry, dream inquiry, and dramatic writing.
Submission Guidelines
This call confronts the entangled systems of oppression that often overshadow the voices outside the western academic milieu, specifically those of academics from the Global South and Diaspora. Our goal is to challenge and reframe this narrative, underscoring the invaluable contributions these scholars provide in a world where decolonization remains an imperative, all while acknowledging the rich lives, dreams, communities, and emotions inherent to these academics from the Diaspora and Global South.
Our invitation is not a plea for token diversity or performative allyship. Rather, it's a clarion call for profound, transformative change within academia that requires an authentic scrutiny of privilege and systemic bias.
Should this mission resonate with you, we warmly invite you to submit your abstract, vignette, poetic inquiry synopsis, or portrait inquiry description, within a range of 300 words. Proposal submission must be submitted by email to the guest editors at youmna.deiri@tamiu.edu and maha.bashri@uaeu.ac.ae .
In later stages of submissions, the full manuscript will be submitted to the journal’s portal:
https://www.ejecs.org/index.php/JECS
Important Dates
- Call for Papers: August 15, 2023
- Abstracts Due: October 15, 2023
- Decisions on Abstracts: November 15, 2023
- Full Manuscript Due: March 15, 2024
- Revisions Sent Out: June 1, 2024
- Final Submission Due: August 15, 2024
- Special Issue Published: December, 2024
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