#CritEdPol Call for Projects: Beautiful Experiments

Posted by Swarthmore College on January 15, 2019

The theme for this issue of #CritEdPol is “Beautiful Experiments.” As identified by Saidiya Hartman (2017), beautiful experiments are the moments, movements, and legacies of resistance, fugitivity, and worldmaking that are taken up to “refuse the menial existence” scripted for poor Black girls. Not a metaphor but a politics, we extend this politics to marginalized populations writ large to consider how their various experiments either respond to or raise implications for education policy. While mainstream education discourse seeks to focus on the intersecting economic, political, and ecological crises that uphold a narrow, fixed victimhood of those deemed “the truly disadvantaged,” we believe the current discourse erases the ways students, families, community activists and agitators have continually imagined and actualized “otherwise” visions for education, reshaping the terrain of struggle for a more just world.

While we will consider all sorts of mixed media and paper submissions that exemplify or critically interrogate “beautiful experiments,” we are particularly interested in pieces that do one or more of the following:

• Illuminate the agency of marginalized groups to counter dominant narratives and policy prescriptions
• Explore the linkages, parallels, and disconnections between contemporary resistance movements and those of the past
• Discuss how the outcomes of beautiful experiments generate vital considerations for policymakers and/or educators.

Please note that although “beautiful experiments” is the theme for this issue, authors need not include this language in their submission.

This issue of #CritEdPol is also itself a beautiful experiment, in that we are continuing to trouble what is understood to be legible knowledge and production within critical education policy studies. First, we have reorganized our editorial board to reflect the various voices that drive our collective work so that undergraduates, community activists, and scholars are all vital co-leaders and participate in this effort. Directly aligned with this reorganization is our ongoing reimagination of journal contributors and contributions.

The call is open to anyone, but we are committed to having a strand of work created by/focused on community activists (youth, parents, teachers, organizers, etc), undergraduates, and academics. All contributors will go through a generative, rather than punitive, processes of peer review and writing/creation. Our process works in two phases, as described in the in the Submission Process & Due Dates section.

Submission Process & Due Dates
Phase 1: Project Proposal

Research papers and mixed media (film, photo essays, or podcasts) projects are welcomed!

Interested contributors must submit proposals for review by February 3, 2019 via #CritEdPol bepress site.

Learn more here: http://critedupolicy.swarthmore.edu/critedpol-2019-cfp/