Please contact the organizers for more information,
Kate
*Activist Scholarship: Social Movements and Emancipatory Knowledge*
*Edited by Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey*
*Call for Submissions*
This book will explore the promise, dilemmas and challenges of activist
scholarship. We define activist scholarship as the production of
knowledge through active engagements with, and in the service of,
progressive social movements. This work necessarily entails movement
between academic and activist spaces. Activist scholars regularly leave
the classroom and campus in order to work in community-based movement
spaces. In so doing, they engage in different types of work, including
campaigns, direct action, protests, cultural events, popular education,
coalition-building and other social change activities. They switch
roles, leaving behind the professorial authority and status that accrues
in a hierarchical academic environment, to become a member of an
activist collective, where academic credentials are less important than
political commitment and a willingness to do the work. And they become
"bilingual", fluent in both activist and scholarly cultures and language.
We are interested in the ways in which emancipatory knowledge(s) emerge
from this synergy between social movements and scholarship. Is there a
unique standpoint(s) that is associated with an activist orientation?
How does this standpoint inform the work of activist scholars? What
types of knowledge are generated when social movement actors take
control of the research process? What different questions are asked?
What types of knowledge are necessary to make movements stronger, more
effective and more democratic? How can scholarly insights assist in
challenging racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of exclusion and
violence within progressive movements?
We would like to explore the methodological insights that are generated
by this type of praxis. What new methodologies have activist scholars
produced? How do these seek to break down power inequalities and remake
the relationship between the researcher and the researched? We welcome
articles that document innovative models of arts-based, feminist,
indigenous, African-centered or participatory methodologies. We would
also like to expose methodological dilemmas facing activist scholars.
How can we address challenges around bias and objectivity that
inevitably are raised when we write from a position of explicit
political commitment? How can we produce meaningful documentation of
social movements in which we are a part, without generating idealized or
one-dimensional heroic narratives? How can we produce thoughtful
critiques of problematic movement practices and lacunae while at the
same time maintaining a respectful relationship with the very actors
that we are writing about?
We are also interested in the roles and responsibilities of activist
scholars. Are there specific roles that academics should play in social
movements? What are the responsibilities of scholars who use their
activist work as a source of data and ultimately build careers on their
engagement with and knowledge of progressive movements? What are the
ethical dilemmas facing scholars who embark on this journey?
Finally, we are interested in pedagogical practices that involve
students in activist-scholarly engagements. Our concern here goes beyond
the scope of radical pedagogies that seek to break down power dynamics
between educator and student and to expose and challenge racialized,
gender and class hierarchies in the classroom. Instead, we would like to
explore pedagogical praxis that bridges between the classroom and the
community and puts the knowledge and labor resources of the classroom at
the service of social movements. This is more than offering "service
learning" opportunities, where students are given the opportunity to
"help disadvantaged communities". Instead, we encourage contributors to
share examples of pedagogical praxis that engages students as social
change agents in transversal relations with activists in non-university
spaces.
We approach this project with a sense of urgency. The re-election of
George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency signals the clear merger of
neoliberal, militarist and Christian fundamentalist agendas. This means
increased violence and economic hardship, and further erosion of civil
and human rights for women and sexual minorities, peoples of the global
South, and poor and working-class peoples of color in Canada and the
U.S., as the U.S. intensifies efforts to achieve "full spectrum
dominance." This predictable future requires bold, creative, and
visionary leadership by activist scholars. We hope this collection will
inspire and ignite both thought and action.
Themes may include:
Role of activist scholars in movement building
Transnational feminist praxis
Challenges of cross-border scholar-activist collaborations
Community-based research
Participatory research
Arts-based research
Anti-oppressive methodologies
Action research
Indigenous/ anti-colonial methodologies
Role of academics in resisting colonization
Dilemmas and complicities in activist scholarship
Ethics of activist scholarship
Censorship of activist scholars working on U.S. Empire, Palestine
Silencing of Arab American/ Diaspora scholars post 9-11
Policing of activist scholars after 9-11
Queering activist scholarship
Challenges of action research with undocumented migrants
Challenges of action research with prisoners
Creating research partnerships with youth
Activist pedagogies
Models of classroom-social movement collaborations
Knowledge production in Movement spaces
Rethinking relationship theory-praxis
Submissions Process
Please submit a 300-word abstract and 200-word biography (highlighting
both activist and scholarly experience) by January 31, 2005 to:
[log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
The editors will review the proposals and invite up to 20 contributors
to submit a 7000-word paper by August 1, 2005.
Participants will be invited to a working meeting in Fall 2005 in
Toronto (expenses paid). This will be an opportunity to present your
work and receive feedback. Papers/ abstracts will be pre-circulated. The
revised paper will be due Dec 1, 2005. Activist Scholarship: Social
Movements and Emancipatory Knowledge will be published by a scholarly
press in 2006/07. Please note that we cannot guarantee publication of
all articles submitted.
About the Editors:
Margo Okazawa-Rey is Visiting Professor in Women's Studies and Director
of the Women's Leadership Institute at Mills College, Oakland, USA and
Professor Emerita of Social Work from San Francisco State University.
She is co-editor of the groundbreaking women's studies textbook Women's
Lives, Multicultural Perspectives (McGraw Hill 2004) and author of
numerous articles on transnational feminist praxis, militarism, feminist
movements and critical multicultural education. Her scholarship is
informed by a lifetime of activism. In the 1970s, she was a member of
the Combahee River Collective, a black feminist group that developed the
theory of intersectionality as a basis for feminist praxis. She is
co-founder of the East Asia-U.S.-Puerto Rico Women's Network against
Militarism, a transnational project that generates feminist analyses and
resistance to U.S. militarism and is a Board member of WomanVision, WAND
Education
Fund and the Women of Color Resource Center.
Julia Sudbury is Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Equity and
Diversity in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Canada.
She worked for many years in the non-profit sector, and was a member of
the Black Women's Movement in Britain. Dr. Sudbury has also been
involved in activism at both local and national levels in the U.S. on
issues of violence against women, state violence and the
prison-industrial complex in organizations like Critical Resistance and
Incite: Women of Color Against Violence. She is author of Other Kinds of
Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation
(Routledge 1998) and editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender and the
Prison-Industrial Complex (Routledge 2005). Dr. Sudbury's research and
teaching interests include community organizing by women of colour and
aboriginal women; theorizing intersections of race, class, gender, and
nation; globalization and transnationalism; women's criminalization and
imprisonment; feminist and anti-oppressive research methodologies.
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