Guest editors: Michael Faris and TJ Geiger 

Call for Proposals

In 1974, Louie Crew and Rictor Norton published a special issue of College English on The Homosexual Imagination (issue 36.3). This issue opens with their editorial, “The Homophobic Imagination,” which outlines how homophobia has shaped the literature that is written and read, the scholarship and criticism that is published, and the practices of English teachers. They call for both “gay criticism,” which challenges normative literary judgment and aesthetics and affirms “the essential ambiguity of all human experience” (286), and an activist and inclusive English studies. As they conclude their editorial, “The appearance of a gay space in this issue of College English is more than a refreshingly novel turn of the tables: it is a step towards human liberation.” The rest of the special issue includes artwork, interviews, essays on gay literature and pedagogy, poetry, an interview with Allen Ginsberg (reprinted from the newsletter Gay Sunshine), and a checklist of resources. This issue was, according to then-editor Richard Ohmann, “the first issue of a scholarly or professional journal ever on that subject [of homosexuality]” (quoted in Williams 60). Not surprisingly, the special issue led to much backlash, including multiple letters to the journal (printed in subsequent issues) and objections from the College Section Committee of NCTE, who were “deeply upset . . . that the homosexuals were now in College English,” according to Ohmann (quoted in Williams 60). The issue also earned praise at the time (e.g., Ken Macrorie wrote the journal in support), but over the last fifty years, memory of this special issue, its radicalness (both for its time and even for now), and its importance has waned. We hope to remember the issue’s significance as an achievement in the history of English studies and recognize its importance as a site of possibility in the present moment.

We are proposing a symposium that commemorates and reflects on The Homosexual Imagination and its fiftieth anniversary, and we invite proposals that commemorate, respond to, reflect on, and extend the contributions of The Homosexual Imagination. We are particularly interested in proposals that respond to the following questions:

• How might we place the special issue in historical/activist context? (It is no accident that both Crew and Norton also wrote for gay activist newsletters and that the special issue was published five years after Stonewall and the subsequent founding of the Gay Liberation Front.)
• How might we situate the special issue in conversation with other historical aspects of the field? For example, a contributor might address “Students’ Right to Their Own Language,” which was published in the same year (1974) in CCC (and the following year in College English). (Indeed, a 1975 letter to the editor decried NCTE for passing SRTOL, passing a resolution against textbook censorship, and publishing the special issue on The Homosexual Imagination; Pixton.)
• How might we extend the discussion of “the homophobic imagination” to today, placing current homophobic, queerphobic, transphobic, racist, and ableist discourses in conversation with Crew and Norton’s discussion?
• How might we explore intersections between gay liberation in the 1970s and other issues of difference related to the profession?
• Given the multimodal nature of the issue (including essays, artwork, and poetry), how might scholars respond to the original issue using a variety of modes and genres (e.g., comics, stencil art, collage, open letters)?
• How might we identify models of intersectional activism in the history of the profession? (The same year the special issue was published, Crew also founded Integrity, the gay and lesbian inclusion ministry within the Episcopal Church, and he and Ernest Clay entered into an interracial marriage.)
• How might this 1974 special issue help us reimagine possibilities for meaningful writing and action within English studies today?

Please send proposals of roughly 400–500 words to Michael J. Faris (michaeljfaris@gmail.com) and T J Geiger II (tj.geiger@ttu.edu) as a DOCX file by Friday, October 6. College English has asked that the entire symposium be 8,500–11,000 words long, so we’re looking for final contributions that are the equivalent of roughly 1,500–2,500 words.

Commitment to Anti-Racist Scholarly Practices

Both symposium editors have read and committed to following Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors. We ask that potential contributors read this document and commit to following these practices as well.

Timeline

We’re looking at the following timeline for publication of this symposium:

• Friday, October 6: Proposals due
• Friday, October 13: Proposals accepted/rejected
• Sunday, December 31: First drafts due
• Monday, January 15: Symposium editors’ feedback and instructions to authors
• Monday, March 11: Revisions due back to symposium editors for approval
• Monday, April 8: Additional revisions due if necessary
• Wednesday, May 1: Full symposium with abstract, bios, permissions, editors’ introduction, and completed citation checks due to College English editorial team

Some Useful Resources for Potential Contributors

• We’ve compiled the entries of the 1974 special issue in this Google Drive folder.
• We’ve compiled letters to the editor published in College English in this Google Drive folder.

Works Cited

Crew, Louie, and Rictor Norton, editors. The Homosexual Imagination. Special issue of College English, vol. 36, no. 3, 1974.

Macrorie, Ken. “Letter to the Editor.” College English, vol. 37, no. 1, 1975, p. 85.

Pixton, William H. “An Open Letter of Congratulation to the NCTE for the 1974 Resolutions.” College English, vol. 37, no. 1, 1975, pp. 92–94.

“Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 25, no. 3, 1974, pp. 1–18, https://doi.org/10.2307/356219.

“Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” College English, vol. 36, no. 6, 1975, pp. 709–26, https://doi.org/10.2307/374965.

Williams, Jeffrey. “English in America Updated: An Interview with Richard Ohmann.” Minnesota Review, nos. 45–46, 1995-1996, pp. 57–75.

Guest editor: Aja Y. Martinez

Call for Papers

This fraught political moment has been characterized, in part, by an attack on the movement of legal storytelling most often referred to as Critical Race Theory (CRT). Throughout the movement’s history, CRT-related scholars have reached out to the humanities, especially English studies (inclusive of literature, creative writing, and rhetoric and writing studies). Now is the time to collectively respond to their call. Scholars in the humanities have the tools to recognize the most recent attack on CRT as the marketing and branding exercise it is. We know that it is insufficient to point out how the opposition gets CRT wrong. Their story about CRT (although based on lies and inaccuracies) has already been too persuasive. As English studies scholars, we know that we must fight story with story. More to the point: we must fight tall tales, myths, and presuppositions with the truth only stories can reveal.

Through their stories, legal storytelling exemplars such as Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic, Patricia J. Williams, and Derrick A. Bell tell us (but also their field and any other field or person who has read their work) that story is how to do this work—story is the way. Telling stories is how we invite a multiplicity of audiences into the conversation, how we build opportunities for points of access to the content, be it the Constitution, theory, legal precedent, etc. The methodology of story in turn informs how we, as teachers of reading and writing, teach people to write their stories. Our broad field of English studies includes contributions to concepts such as world building, dialogue, character development, style, diction, etc. Ours is the discipline of writing process and revision, of reading and analysis, of rhetorical situation and effectiveness. We know how to compose; we know how to engage an audience; we know how to teach others to do this as well. Who better to take on this charge and carry it forward than us, English studies? We have the tools, the equipment, the training, the lens to engage this conversation on counterstory, the counterstories that will counter the stories the racist, radical right would weave and tell to disinform the public about CRT.

Our field can rise to the occasion, supporting CRT in this time of struggle. We are leaders in a conversation about the core questions of American society. Through our field’s unique humanities-informed approach to the methodology of counterstory we can resource, equip, and contribute to the sustainability of CRT for years to come. But we must get it right. Our work as counterstory scholars, teachers, and writers in English studies must be meticulous and precise. Any work we do with counterstory must be informed by the tenets of CRT. It cannot be sloppy work—it cannot be devoid of the interdisciplinary research involved in doing the reading, an awareness of the histories and key figures, and knowing the foundations of CRT as an academic field and movement.

In the past two and half years of this mainstream, hot-button national fight, the urgency of storytelling through the methodology of counterstory has been underutilized by those seeking to defend and promote Critical Race Theory. It is time for scholars in the humanities—scholars of English studies in particular—to heed the call for collaboration issued by CRT founders and legal storytelling exemplars Delgado, Stefancic, Williams, and Bell. It is time to take back the narrative from those who would promote distortion and disinformation. It is time to extend the storytelling legacy of CRT, writing our own stories so others can be told.

Possible topics and questions to consider:

• How do the histories, tenets, key figures, theories, methods, and/or pedagogies of CRT inform your work within English studies?
• Within this political moment of vitriolic backlash against CRT, how does your work as an English studies teacher-scholar-activist intervene in or contribute to resisting these ideologies at the local/state/national levels?
• What is the interface between CRT and your disciplinary area of English studies, and what are the implications of this intersection for the future of CRT in education?

We are seeking:

• Article-length works (7,500 words)
• Autoethnographies, personal essays, or counterstories (2,000–4,000 words)
• Retrospective or prospective analyses (2,000–4,000 words)
• Bibliographic essays that trace a significant theory, idea, or approach throughout the work or history of CRT connecting that theory, idea, or approach to the field of English studies (2,000–4,000 words)
• Personal reminisces (300 words)

All submissions will undergo peer review prior to formal acceptance in this issue. Proposals should identify the intended topic, focus, and genre of the submission and briefly describe the author’s method or approach. Proposals should be no longer than 500 words, exclusive of the bibliography. Please email proposals to aja.martinez@unt.edu with the subject line “CRT Issue.”

Publication timeline:

Deadline for proposals: April 30, 2023

Initial acceptances sent: May 31, 2023

Completed manuscripts due for peer review: July 31, 2023

Feedback sent to authors: August 31, 2023

Revised works due: March 1, 2024

Theme issue published: mid-July 2024

*contributors submitting artwork or other visual tributes will need to attain any necessary consents or rights for photos or other copyrighted materials.

All prospective authors should review Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors prior to submitting articles, reviews, or proposals for a Special Issue of College English.

Call for Applicants: Assistant Editors of College English

The incoming editors of College English seek three advanced PhD students to serve as assistant editors for a one-year term to begin August 2022. The assistant editors will work with the editorial team to perform citation checks, copyediting, and other tasks related to the production of the journal. They will be invited to attend meetings of the journal’s editorial board and occasional meetings with the editorial team. Because we are mindful of the other responsibilities that graduate students have at this early stage of their careers, the work of each assistant editor will not exceed five hours a month.

This is an unpaid position; however, it will provide three advanced graduate students with editorial experience, networking opportunities, and familiarity with the behind-the-scenes and decision-making processes of a top-tier journal in the field.

Applicants should be advanced doctoral students in English who have completed coursework in at least one area of the field: literature, composition-rhetoric, creative writing, linguistics, professional writing, English education, etc. We especially seek applications from graduate students researching at the intersections of English studies and social justice, from graduate students engaging with disability studies research, and from BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ graduate students.

Please send a letter of application outlining your interest in this position, a current CV, and the contact information for one reference to collegeenglisheditors@gmail.com.

The deadline for applications is June 20, 2022. Applicants will be notified by July 20, and the position will begin on August 1, 2022, and run through July 31, 2023.

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Special Theme Issue: Building Communities of Resistance: bell hooks’s Life, Work, and Impact

When we talk about that which will sustain and nurture our spiritual growth as a people, we must once again talk about the importance of community. For one of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.

—bell hooks
Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, 1999 (p. 213)

The incoming editors of College English seek proposals for a special theme issue to be published in January 2023, “Building Communities of Resistance: bell hooks’ Life, Work, and Impact.” We invite authors to submit works examining hooks’ writing, activism, and pedagogy.

In addition to recognizing hooks’ powerful legacy, this theme issue seeks to examine her impact on individuals, programs, and communities within the field of English studies. In celebration of hooks’ work as an academic scholar and theorist, teacher, storyteller, poet, essayist, children’s book author, cultural critic, public intellectual, and activist, we encourage authors from across the discipline—literature, composition-rhetoric, linguistics, creative writing, English education, professional and technical writing, digital media, film, cultural studies, and so on—to contribute to this theme issue.

We are especially interested in works that address the transformative nature of hooks’ work and that recognize the university as a powerful site for “meaningful radical political work” (hooks, Talking Back 104). We seek submissions from a diverse range of English studies scholars examining how hooks’ work speaks to us as students, teachers, researchers, authors, individuals, and activists. Submissions to this theme issue might consider how we can achieve hooks’ vision of education as the practice of freedom, how her work can help us to dismantle structures of domination in our English departments, universities, and professional organizations—racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, classism, etc. Authors might consider submitting works that address how we can create courses and academic programs that are shaped by hope, love, “risk and daring” (Talking Back 151) or works that demonstrate how to build new sites of “critical resistance” (Yearning 3) in the academy.

We invite works that consider hooks’ research, theories, and practices, including her approach to:

We are seeking:

All submissions will undergo peer review prior to formal acceptance in this issue.

Proposals should identify the intended topic, focus, and genre of the submission and briefly describe the author’s method or approach. Proposals should be no longer than 500 words, exclusive of the bibliography. Please email proposals to collegeenglisheditors@gmail.com with the subject line “bell hooks Issue.”

Publication Timeline

Deadline for proposals: March 1, 2022
Initial acceptances sent: March 15–20, 2022
Completed manuscripts due for peer review: June 1, 2022
Feedback sent to authors: July 1, 2022
Revised works due: October 1, 2022
Theme issue published: mid-January 2023

*contributors submitting artwork or other visual tributes will need to attain any necessary consents or rights for photos or other copyrighted materials.

All prospective authors should review Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors prior to submitting articles, reviews, or proposals to College English.

Questions?

Contact collegeenglisheditors@gmail.com with questions pertaining to this special issue of College English.

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Special Issue Editors

The incoming editors of College English seek proposals for special issues of the journal to be guest edited by scholars in the field. While we welcome a full range of special issue proposals, we are especially interested in publishing guest-edited issues that invite diverse scholars, theories, research methods, practices, and perspectives, and that feature

• innovative interdisciplinary research and scholarship from faculty working across the discipline of English studies and/or
• research and scholarship working at the intersection of college English and social justice and catalyzing the essential paradigmatic shifts already underway in the field.

We hope to publish at least two special issues between spring 2023 and spring 2024.

Proposals for special issues should include the following:

1. The Proposal (1,500 words, including bibliography/works cited). An introduction to the topic and focus of the proposed special issue that includes a tentative title for the issue, an explanation of the need for the issue and the issue’s significance for College English readers (the kairos and context), a brief review of relevant literature or a short working bibliography, a list of genres or research methods that will be considered for the issue, and a discussion of how the proposed editorial team will work together to bring the issue to press.
2. The Proposed Special Issue’s CFP. A good (in-process) draft of your proposed issue’s CFP (any length) and a short discussion (300 words) of how and where you intend to distribute the call so that you receive proposals from diverse scholars in the field. Note that your call should be broad enough to invite a range of exceptional submissions, but it should also be focused enough to demonstrate topic cohesion.
3. Short, focused CVs for each member of the proposed editorial team. 2–4-page CVs focusing on each of the guest editors’ research in the area of the proposed special issue topic and editorial experience (if any).

Proposals should be emailed as a single attachment (.doc or .pdf) to collegeenglisheditors@gmail.com. Please use the email subject heading: Special Issue Proposal.

All special issue proposals will be evaluated by members of the new College English Editorial Board based on the editorial team’s demonstrated expertise in the proposed topic and the issue’s potential to

• make an essential or significant contribution to the field of English studies;
• advance our understanding of the topic;
• engage College English readers;
• demonstrate an innovative or well-researched approach to the topic;
• feature a range of scholarly approaches and diverse voices in the field;
• employ research methods and theories ethically;
• engage ethically with sources as part of a productive scholarly conversation; and
• represent diverse canons, epistemological foundations, and ways of knowing in the field.

While the guest editors will have full creative responsibility for the content of their special issue, they will confer with the journal’s editorial team to discuss their proposed CFP as well as the publication timeline and peer review and publication processes. The incoming editorial team will offer additional advice when requested and will be available to assist your team as you bring your special issue to press.

Proposal Timeline

Deadline for special issue team proposals: April 1, 2022

Proposals reviewed by the incoming CE Editorial Board: April 1–May 1, 2022

Decisions sent: May 15, 2022

Please reach out with any questions you have about your special issue proposal, the publication process, or the responsibilities of the journal’s editors and guest editors (collegeenglisheditors@gmail.com).

All prospective guest editors should review and commit to Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices: A Heuristic for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors prior to submitting their proposals.