Call for Manuscripts: Strangers in Academia: Teaching and Scholarship at the Margins
Call for Manuscripts
Strangers in Academia: Teaching and Scholarship at the Margins
Christian Z. Goering, University of Arkansas; Angela Dye, PBS Development, LLC; and P.L. Thomas, Furman University, editors
This volume seeks to collect contributions from authors across the spectrum of academe who, for one reason or another, feel as if they are strangers at their own universities and/or in K-12 education.
In the background of this project, we are confronting the mainstream idea that formal education is somehow revolutionary, for both individuals and the larger society. Therefore, this volume is a testament to how all levels of academia are too often reflect and perpetuate the society the schools/universities serve.
Specifically, we are seeking to include the experience, thinking, and scholarly perspective of those who feel othered, ostracized, pushed out, relegated, or marginalized because of your status (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) or your professional and/or ideological stances through experiences working in higher education or K-12. While it’s the ideal of the academy to consider all warranted perspectives perhaps there are elements of your status, practice, or philosophy that is being undermined by your administrators and/or colleagues. Insidious attacks, comments in the hall, or cultural norms have left you and/or your work feeling less than welcome.
Contributions should range between 3000 and 4000 words and explore the complex nature of working in K-12 or higher education and feeling less-than-welcome. What was the experience like? How did you address it? What were the consequences? Two-page chapter proposals are due on September 30, 2016, with complete chapters due December 1, 2016.
Submit all proposals as Word attachments to paul.thomas@furman.edu
The blog post below serves as an invitation to begin considering contributing to this volume.
No, there was no way out, and no one can imagine what nights in prison are like.Meursault, The Stranger, Albert Camus
I left public education after an 18-year career as a high school English teacher and coach. The exit had its symbolism because at that time I was wearing a wrist brace on my right hand from overuse after almost two decades of responding to about 4000 essays and 6000 journal entries per year; in other words, I left public education broken.
A former student of mine on the cusp of becoming a first-year English teacher asked me recently what my first years were like, and I had to confess that from day one, my career as an educator has always been at the margins, a stranger at all levels of formal schooling and academia.
Yes, my hand was exhausted from marking essays, but I was broken as a public school teacher by administrators and in a bit of not so hyperbolic science fiction, The System.
Every single day of my life as a public school teacher, I worked against the system—but I did so with my door open because I believed (and still believe) my defiance was for The Cause.
I was never defiant for my own benefit, but Call for Manuscripts: Strangers in Academia: Teaching and Scholarship at the Margins – the becoming radical:
