In the midst of this unprecedented global pandemic, Reflections coeditors Laurie Grobman and Deborah Mutnick invite submissions for a special section in the Spring 2021 issue that document, analyze, and reflect on the impact of COVID 19 on existing community-engaged writing projects, partnerships, and communities, including the transformation of K-16 classrooms by remote instruction.
The work of community-engaged writing situates us to examine the impact of the coronavirus and its wider social and economic consequences on already existing community partners and projects and to apply the subfield’s increasingly deep knowledge of historical, cultural, and rhetorical complexities of scholarly engagement with our own or others’ communities to the current crisis.
You might consider the following, by no means exhaustive, list of questions:
- What has been the extent of changes in your community writing project?
- How has the pandemic affected your community partner?
- What are you learning from your engagement with an existing project and/or partner about the impact of the pandemic?
- Have you initiated any new community writing projects in response to the pandemic?
- Have you applied your knowledge of community-engaged writing and rhetoric to your own neighborhood or other communities, so many of which are struggling to protect their members from illness, death, unemployment, lost health insurance, and many other effects of the virus?
- Has your understanding of community been altered?
- Has the shift to remote learning—often Zoom—changed your relationship to your students in ways that create community differently than face-to-face classroom instruction?
Reflections publishes scholarly research articles (18-30 pages) and invites the following types of proposals and submissions and welcome contributions in each category from community members, activists, and/or organizers:
- Brief profiles of community-based writing and civic engagement organizations, partnerships, programs aimed at disseminating information and sharing models from which other faculty, scholars, and administrators can benefit. (3-6 pages)
- Brief project/course profiles of community-based writing and civic engagement that are not developed into research articles but address course objectives, logistics, obstacles, successes, and ideas for further iterations of the course. (3-6 pages)
- Undergraduate research articles for a new and continuing feature of each issue in addition to the journal’s existing showcase of community-based and student writing and/or artwork. 12-20 pages)
- Reflective or personal essays that contribute to our collective understanding of the subfield’s scope and definition.
The deadline for submissions for the special section is November 1, 2020. Please note that we will also be accepting general submissions for publication in Spring 2021 during this period on a rolling basis. All manuscripts should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) Author-Date System, sixteenth edition.
For queries about Vol. 21, Issue 1, or the journal in general, contact coeditors Laurie Grobman and/or Deborah Mutnick at reflections.coeditors@gmail.com. Submit all manuscripts through the journal’s new portal in Open Journal Systems at https://journals.psu.edu/reflections/user.