In the interdisciplinary field of education, critical race theory (CRT) is the predominant framework for studying racism. However, some have argued CRT lacks a racial theory and that CRT-education scholarship should examine how education "racializes" (i.e. contributes to making racialized categories). In this theoretical article, I…

This paper explores what DisCrit Mothering means across multiple, dynamic identities, contexts, and experiences. To this end, the author explores potential implications of this emergent theoretical orientation for the broader community of motherscholars. This paper explicitly addresses the personal and political implications of DisCrit Mothering…

The aim of this article is to call for qualitative researchers in education and other human sciences to grapple with recent developments in trauma studies and engage in reconceptualizing their research practices so that they pay attention to the catastrophic effects of colonialism on individuals and communities. Joining other critics who have…

In this paper, we expand the Foucauldian question of "what is thinking doing?" We approach the question in the context of reading as an entirely ontological enterprise. Aligned with the special issue theme of reading as a "long preparation," and prompted by Deleuze's discussion of "reading with love," we link the two…

This reflective essay documents my experiences, critiques, and application of critical whiteness studies in my own research, though, as proven below, they cannot be understood without my forever commitment to strengthen, expand, and re-imagine the field. To be clear, I do not critique for critique's sake, rather, I present my approach for the sake…

Motherscholaring is an essential mode of intellectual and spiritual travel, a type of soulwork, epistemologically rooted in love, occuring at the intersections of personal and professional theories, research, and practices that move toward justice. In this conceptual paper, we creatively and collectively explore meanings of motherscholaring found…

The acknowledgement and attention to the global pandemics has caused shifts in every field beyond imagination. As educators witnessing the impacts of the shifts, heightened exposure of equity in education continues to be highlighted and the urgency for engagements established in solidarity. In this article, I emphasize how institutionalized…

In this essay, I reflect on and detail some of my experiences navigating the question of what it means for white scholars and white researchers to critically engage their own whiteness within the context of educational research. Considering my current academic role as a faculty member who works primarily with graduate students in educational…

As three doctoral students, we conducted a collaborative autoethnography to explore how power dynamics in higher education played a role in our identity development as scholars. Through the lens of Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner's "Landscapes of Practice" and Foucault's notions of power, we specifically attended to how our attempts to…

Joy can be defined as a feeling of happiness, well-being, success, or delight (Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/joy, 2014). It can also be seen as the "source" or "cause" of such delight. However, according to Alice Walker, there is another articulation of joy from an endarkened…

In this article, the authors explore what it means to be critical qualitative researchers before, during, and after the 2016 US presidential campaign and election. They reflect on their positionality as scholars of color and second-generation immigrants with commitments to marginalized communities, but also with concerns for their own everyday…

We center and unpack the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Commission on Research in Black Education's (CORIBE) research validity principle, which emphasizes that the highest priority must be placed on studies of: (A) African tradition (history, culture and language); (B) Hegemony (e.g. uses of schooling/socialization and…

In this paper, we take an unsanctioned academic network, a writing group, as a site of inquiry into both the broad given-ness of the norms of the neoliberal academy and our simultaneous compliance with and resistance to these norms. We choose to comply because we are invested in becoming academics; we continue to research and write for conferences…

This essay describes how, as a scholar in gender diverse childhoods, I was collecting ethnographic data at the time of the 2016 election, and how this experience led to a series of jarring personal and professional transformations as a scholar writing for social justice. Not only did find that arts-based methods were particularly apt for capturing…

This essay concerns the political and social psychological roots of the White American electorate's decision to elect Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States in 2016. The author explains how the Trump presidency is an iconoclastic reaction by the White American electorate to the country's first African American president, Barack…