21st Century Racial Narratives in US Culture: Public Engagement

Dear Colleagues,

“21st Century Racial Narratives in US Culture: Public Engagement” aims to gather essays that consider the role of public humanities in narratives about race and racism in contemporary US culture and society. No longer is the work of humanists confined to the ivory tower—with the rise of social media, on-line platforms, and mainstream media, public intellectuals steeped in humanities methodologies/archives and invested in ending racism and intersectional oppression are sharing their knowledge with a general public, whether in their local university and college communities or on the pages of The New York Times, Tik Tok videos, and Twitter/X feeds. Topics can include, but are in now way limited, to the following:

• The narrative of Black Lives Matter
• The weaponization of Critical Race Theory
• Resistance inside and outside academia to charges of “Wokeism”
• Combatting racism on and off campus through public humanities
• Talking back to book bans
• Land acknowledgements and education about settler-colonialism
• Reparations
• Teaching as a form of public engagement through decolonial and anti-racist practices
• Bridging town-gown divides through shared goals of racial healing and repair after acknowledging and owning racist harm
• Amplifying and uplifting stories of people experiencing intersectional oppression

Timeline:
500–600 word abstracts with 1–2 page outline due Friday, 1 March 2024
Invitations sent to contributors no later than Wednesday, 1 May 2024
Final essays due Thursday, 1 August 2024

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Ho
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• race
• racism
• intersectionality
• critical race theory
• public humanities