CALL FOR PAPERS: 7th Annual Equity and Social Justice Conference, March 1, 2014. Syracuse University

CALL FOR PAPERS: 7th Annual Equity and Social Justice Conference, March 1,
2014. Syracuse University

CFP deadline: Nov 9. Acceptance notification: Dec. 13
Website: esj.syr.edu
Theme: Social justice education out of bounds: New frameworks and alliances

Keynotes: Peter McLaren, Brian Jones, The Movement

Contemporary education reform movements have involved increasingly
standardized and privatized attempts to control public institutions
and the funds that support them. Top-down initiatives, coupled with
mandates that drain budgets and strain resources, have been
constricting the minds, bodies, and imaginations of educators and
learners. But movements to resist are growing. Across the U.S.,
educators, students, parents, and scholars have been organizing
against high-stakes standardized testing, common core curricula,
public schools closings, and the general privatization of educational
processes, practices, and sites. This organizing has taken a variety
of forms, united diverse groups of constituents, and involved all
levels of education.

Education has always been a site of contestation, and the resistance
to neoliberal educational “reform” is embedded within a long history
of struggle over issues of educational access and purpose. At this
year’s conference, we hope to address the history, current state, and
potential promise of activism for social justice in education.

Proposals that address such topics include (but are not limited to)
the following:

- How are contemporary struggles for democratic education similar to
and/or different from previous iterations?
- How can movements for liberatory, critical education link up with
other social justice movements such as Idle No More, Right to the
City, and other activism around disability, race, class, gender,
sexuality, and nationality?
- What approaches should social justice educators and activists take
to support contemporary public and private institutions? Is there
space within the existing structures of these institutions for
authentic reform?
- How can other disciplines (ex., geography, sciences, literature,
mathematics) inform and move forward social justice educational theory
and practice?
- How are efforts to achieve social justice and equality affected by
the current reforms?
- What role can the arts and art education play in the struggle for
social justice and equity in education?

We invite individual paper proposals, symposium and panel proposals,
and alternative format and special interest group proposals from
graduate students, faculty, staff, educators, and activists. For more
information and to send your proposal please visit the conference
website at esj.syr.edu. For questions, contact Derek at
equitysocialjustice@gmail.com