Special Issue of College English: Informed Refusal: Theories, Pedagogies, and Methods for Imagining Consent in English Studies
Due Date: 10-25-2024
Too much is happening without our consent—without concern for the right that each of us has to create boundaries, have them respected, and move in the world with pleasure, joy, and self-determination.
To our minds, we cannot help but understand consent as a, if not the, crucial topic of seriously playful consideration. This special issue brings together rhetoric, composition, literacy, literature, linguistics, and creative writing scholar-teachers to consider what consent is, what it might be, and how thinking with consent might shape the way we do our work.
Our working definition of consent is the successful, autonomous and willing communication of all parties’ desire to engage in an interaction, including the verbal and embodied acts that indicate affirmation or refusal of requests.
Our intention is to illustrate to the English studies community how nimble and important consent as a meaningful concept is and what potentials are embedded in a careful study of consent. We invite scholars from across English studies to consider eight domains that have kairotic appeal for those of us interested in consent as a feminist praxis: (1) Composition Theory, Practice, or Praxis; (2) Assessment; (3) Administration; (4) Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy Key Terms; (5) Digital and Technological Consent; (6) Creative Writing Theory and Practice; (7) Literary Studies and the Teaching of Literature; (8) Linguistics and Multilingual, Translingual, and Critical Language Awareness.
Genres and What to Submit
We seek a wide range of epistemological and methodological approaches and encourage submissions of the following types:
- Formal academic prose grounded in deep scholarly expertise (5,000–6,000-word limit)
- Counterstories bringing consent and critical race theory together
- Assessment practices emerging from a consideration of consent
- A critical discourse analysis of uninformed consent on the linguistic hegemony of standardized English and a Western rhetorical tradition
- Empirical studies of consent pedagogies that account for the messy uptakes and failures in a specific writing context
- Poetry on theories and pedagogies of consent
- Photography with artists’ statements and accompanying alt text descriptions
- Administrative policies revived or emerging from a precisely articulated consent framework
- Community-engaged literacy programs and assessments grounded in consent
- Personal, lyric, or reportage-style creative nonfiction essays on consent theories, practices, pedagogies, and methods
- Theoretically-grounded classroom narratives, syllabi, or assignments reflecting on successes and failures with consent pedagogy
- Structured dialogues or interviews with consent activists
- Any other forms of scholarship not listed here
Please address the following questions in your proposal (500-word max.):
- Which of the eight domains do you believe your contribution engages?
- What issues relating to consent and English studies are you engaging in your work?
- What contribution type are you offering to the collection: academic research, nonacademic research, poetry, image, structured dialogue, and so on?
Include a 5–8-item bibliography (not included in 500-word limit).
View the full CFP on the NCTE’s website. Please submit proposals to us at InformedRefusal@gmail.com by 25 October 2024. Make sure to use the subject “Submission to CE Special Issue on Consent.”