Call for Proposals

The College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) invites proposals for its Annual Conference, held in Austin, Texas on November 20-22, 2019. This year's conference theme, Informed Action: Agency, Advocacy, Activism, offers CUFA and NCSS attendees an opportunity to more intentionally bridge research-driven theory and classroom practice.

In 2018, CUFA program chair Christopher Busey urged conference attendees to expand the intellectual contours of social studies education in troubling times. Yet, as David Stovall reminded us in his 2018 keynote, “America is proving itself to be what it has always been; there is nothing new about this moment.” The United States of America remains far from a perfect union; as a society, we neglect direct attention to the past and present implications of settler colonialism and neoliberalism while contemporary discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and violence continue to disproportionately affect marginalized communities, including but not limited to Indigenous and transgender women, women of color, Black men, religious minorities, and children and families in search of refuge and asylum. As scholars of social studies education, we often focus on how our research might inform curriculum and practices that impact current and future students and teachers, as well as the communities in which those students and teachers exist. However, our actions as researchers must also be informed by the communities with whom we have the privilege of working; how might we become better listeners and learners ourselves?

CUFA encourages proposals that advance knowledge and understanding of a wide range of issues pertaining to social studies education, with a common vision of moving the field forward through the theme of Informed Action. We welcome proposals from educators, faculty, scholars, and students who work in P-12 schools, teacher preparation, higher education, and non-traditional P-16 educational settings; those who work within and across such disciplines as ethnic studies, Indigenous studies, literacy, public policy, economics, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, queer studies, religious studies, and sociology; and community activists, organizers, artists, and others who engage social studies to inform policy and practice, and who in turn inspire the possibilities of social studies research and education.

In this effort, we draw from the critical, anti-racist, anti-oppressive, intersectional, settler colonial, and transnational foci centered in recent CUFA calls for proposals as we envision CUFA 2019 as a space that takes up such themes as an integral part of social studies education in theory, research, and practice. In particular, we urge our membership to consider the following four subthemes in preparation of submissions for CUFA 2019:

1. DEMOCRACY FOR WHOM?

These institutions workin’

The devil prove he lurkin’

(Ruby Ibarra)

The preparation of active, participatory citizens in a democracy has long been held as the primary purpose of public schooling and is commonly used to position social studies education as vital for school and civic life. However, the history of education in the United States is a long history of injustice and inequity, from Native boarding schools designed to “kill the Indian,” to Black, Chinese, and Mexican public schools that served to systematically dismantle the cultural and linguistic practices and traditions of nonwhite communities, to the recent shutdown of dozens of majority-Black public schools in Chicago’s South Side. Thus, as Choctaw and Cherokee scholar Frances Rains explains, “The dilemma is how to teach about ‘core values’ such as ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ and ‘justice for all’ in a country that has a continuing legacy of oppression and intimidation within its own boundaries.” In 2017, keynote panelist Kevin Kumashiro urged CUFA attendees to consider how the educational system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. If we as social studies educators and scholars are indeed devoted to democracy, our informed action must attend to disrupting the status quo. Proposals for this subtheme should center the role of democracy in the social studies and public schooling and might consider the following questions:

• If a more perfect union requires, as the Preamble to the Constitution claims, the establishment of justice, what might democratic education truly look like in educational spaces? If the current systems must change, in which direction must they bend and how must they begin the work of transformation for the benefit of society?
• How can social studies scholars better acknowledge the increasingly traumatic and precarious experiences faced by individuals and communities who exist on the margins of mainstream society in our current political atmosphere? How can intersectionality and other frameworks help researchers better articulate the different forms of oppression that exist in our democracy?
• How can we foster more democratic discourse in a time when beliefs are often valued over facts?
• How can we decenter whiteness and other societal norms that permeate educational spaces, from early childhood to post-secondary? What theoretical approaches might provide lenses through which we can highlight perspectives and experiences that have historically marginalized?
• What is the role of both curriculum and instruction in either exacerbating historical and contemporary trauma or acknowledging and disrupting such traumas?

2. CITIZENSHIP & CIVICS

Until women can get equal pay for equal work

This is not my America

Until same gender loving people can be who they are

This is not my America

Until black people can come home from a police stop

Without being shot in the head

This is not my America

Until poor whites can get a shot at being successful

This is not my America

(Janelle Monáe)

The definition and conceptualization of citizenship, in a multitude of forms and identities, continues to preoccupy many social studies educators and researchers. Yet, in many P-12 classroom contexts, citizenship is frequently reduced to notions of rule-following and contributing in discrete, individual ways to one’s community. As 2016 keynote speaker Bettina Love reminded us, we “don’t need to be a good citizen to have rights.” Proposals for this subtheme should center citizenship and civics and might consider the following questions:

• As a field centered in civic action, how can scholars and educators address the limitations of traditional citizenship education and the longstanding exclusion of communities of color from the civic process? Moreover, how might the curriculum be reframed to describe the ways disenfranchised groups have demonstrated civic engagement within their own communities despite such exclusion?
• How might social studies disciplines such as economics, geography, and sociology be more explicitly tied to civic engagement and citizenship?
• What is the role of social movements in citizenship education? What opportunities do students have to participate in social movements in and out of the classroom? How might notions of dissent and resistance be framed in contrast to, or instead of, civic action?
• How might social studies educators learn from community organizers, activists, and artists to provide students with an array of opportunities for civic engagement? How might scholarly definitions of civic action expand to include the work of community organizers, activists, and artists?

3. CHALLENGES & POSSIBILITIES IN TEACHER EDUCATION

Teacher, my hands up

Please, don't make me a victim

Teachers, stand up

You need to tell us how to flip this system

(The Coup)

Many CUFA attendees work directly with future social studies educators in a range of teacher preparation programs, often with sparse required methods coursework. In teacher preparation programs, teacher candidates may struggle with content knowledge and may never observe the classroom teaching of a social studies lesson as the presence of social studies in early grades continues to diminish. In the face of such daunting realities, CUFA is a unique space for social studies teacher educators to confront the shared challenges they face in preparing the next generation of social studies teachers, and to explore the possibilities of this important work. In 2017, keynote panelist Wayne Au asserted that “our kids want to see themselves as potent justice warriors.” The same could be said for teacher candidates and teacher educators determined to use schooling spaces as venues for transformation toward liberty and justice for all. Proposals for this theme should specifically attend to the task of preparing future social studies teachers  and might consider the following questions:

• How can social studies researchers and educators be more intentional in their work to promote and implement critical media literacy in the fake news era? How can we prepare future social studies educators and researchers to do this work in a polarized, post-truth society?
• How might teacher educators support future teachers to think differently about their power in the classroom and to prepare students for the world they need, rather than the world in which they currently exist? What are the curricular implications for such a vision?
• Where are youth learning about and engaging with social issues outside of traditional school settings? How can P-12 educators and teacher educators learn from these spaces?

4. INFORMED ACTION BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER

In the back of the schoolbus

I was reading my history

But it didn’t say nothing

About the kid sitting next to me

(Amy Ray)

In 2016, CUFA keynote Tyrone Howard demanded that scholars draw the line from theory to practice. A year later, keynote panelist Kevin Kumashiro reminded social justice scholars to walk the walk, not just talk the talk and publish articles. In 2018, keynote David Stovall distinguished between those who are “merely theorizing and who is doing the work,” framing this as a critical moment in which each of us must decide if we will retreat or engage. Each of these keynotes from the last three years of CUFA conferences pointed to a common criticism of academics: that educational researchers are isolated in the world of academia, far removed from the realities of contemporary classrooms and schools. How might researchers take informed action in ways that might more directly engage with communities and classrooms? Proposals addressing this subtheme should attend to informed action beyond the ivory tower  and might consider the following questions:

• How can researchers attend to current crises, from local issues such as the gentrification that has transformed our 2019 conference site of Austin, TX and the water crisis in Flint, MI, to broader issues at a national and global scale, including voter disenfranchisement and suppression and waves of migrants seeking asylum?
• What might researchers learn from the teachers and community members who are already responding to these crises and who are protecting and advocating for students and families? How might scholars connect to and support the work of P-12 classroom teachers and those who live in communities most affected by such crises?
• How might scholars better serve those individuals and communities who are often subjects of study, but who rarely benefit from researchers’ scholarship and resources? How might scholars show greater accountability for distributing their work in the public sphere? What skills do researchers need to make these shifts, and how might schools and colleges of education serve as spaces that foster such skills?
• How might social studies researchers reframe their epistemological, theoretical and methodological approaches to de-center imperialism, colonialism, and elitism and to actively dismantle white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy?

CUFA 2019 proposals are due March 8, 2019 by 11:59 pm Pacific Standard Time. For detailed descriptions of the types of sessions available and required proposal formatting, click here. To submit a proposal, click here.