Dear Colleagues:
Please consider submitting a proposal to our Peitho summer special issue on 2026peithospecialissue.
Sincerely,
Patty Wilde, Erin Costello Wecker, and Justine Trinh
Academia in Crisis: How Feminist Rhetorical Scholars Respond
Summer 2026 Special Issue of Peitho
Editors: Patty Wilde, Erin Costello Wecker, and Justine Trinh
“What hurts? And how do we go on living while it hurts?”
–mimi khúc
Academia is experiencing an unprecedented attack. Denounced as the home of “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” and propagator of the “woke” liberal movement, higher education has found itself in the sights of the Trump administration. Striking colleges and universities from many angles, it has called for the end of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access initiatives, unjustly detained international students and revoked their visas, severed federal research support, threatened student loan structures, and generally restricted academic freedom. Given this current political moment, it’s hard not to catastrophize the future of academia. These demands, as outlined and thus far implemented, will irreparably devastate colleges and universities across the nation. And because, as Michelle LaFrance explains, “institutions coordinate the experiences and practices of individuals” (4), the faculty, staff, and students who teach and study at these places of higher learning most acutely feel the fallout. Each new order, call, cut, and contraction further drains us, making us tired and “unwell,” to use the language of mimi khúc. “[B]eing unwell is not a failure…our unwellness is not our fault,” she explains. Rather, “we are unwell in different ways at different times, in relation to differentially disabling and enabling structures” (5). Because we can’t change anything until we acknowledge it, this special issue of Peitho invites feminist rhetorical scholars to document what hurts us in higher education, chronicling stories of institutional crisis and unwellness to “intervene in the reproduction” of our ailments (Ahmed 171). Beyond witnessing these harms, this special issue will challenge contributors to harness the slender currents of goodwill and share the navigational strategies that have buoyed them in these aberrant times.
Unequivocally, Trump’s directives have created pandemonium in academic institutions, but even prior to this administration, academia has long made us sick. Reflecting and reproducing the values and priorities of dominant culture, the institutions that create and circulate knowledge can never be neutral, as Foucault teaches us. Systems of power are baked into the DNA of higher ed and imparted to those who pass through its doors. Writes Yasmin Nair, “The university has always been where young people are sent to develop their sense of class belonging: the elites to places that teach them to quote Wordsworth and speak Latin, and the middle classes to the equivalent of trade schools for a little Latin, perhaps, but more to learn ‘skilled’ work.” Built off the land and labor of Indigenous and Black people (Stein 55), colleges and universities helped perpetuate the capitalist-colonist ideologies that prioritize profit over people and the general public good. As academe has become more corporatized through neoliberal policies, institutions market and sell their programs to those looking for a competitive edge in industry. And with ever-increasing tuition costs, students and parents expect a return on investment. At the graduate level, the scarcity mindset cultivates a sense of competition among equally capable and committed peers. Graduate students feel compelled to do as much as possible often with little support to be one of the lucky few chosen for ever-decreasing tenure-line positions. Their fears and anxieties stem from the decline of academia, affecting them mentally, emotionally, and physically. On the other side of the institutional coin, faculty and staff are constantly asked to do more with fewer resources. Faced with austerity measures and budget shortfalls caused by everything from new buildings to administrative bloat to the enrollment cliff, our academic homes, particularly those situated in the humanities, have suffered considerably. Programs have been gutted and departments “restructured,” “consolidated,” or dismantled entirely in the name of “optimization.” As a result, there is a growing reliance on contingent faculty, who do truly amazing work, but their positions are often first on the chopping block during reform, not renewed or eliminated outright.
While we are living in times of crisis, we know that many a good tree grew on shallow ground. Even when facing ecocide that is characterized by hostility, toxicity, and nutrient-deprivation, they still dared to grow. Following suit, this special issue recognizes the precarity facing higher ed and meets those demands with an acknowledgment that from crisis new possibilities can emerge. Drawing on Cornel West, Cheryl Glenn encourages us to see “the evidence (which doesn’t look good at all),” and “make a leap of faith beyond that evidence to conceptualize and mobilize a union of rhetoric and feminism” (195). Reifying the potentiality of this hope, then, is not absurd or frivolous, but a necessary step in reaffirming our commitment to each other and to taking action in times of emergency and crisis.
Advancing these goals, we invite contributions from all aspects of academia including administrators, faculty, staff, and students from a range of higher ed institutions–including community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, liberal arts colleges, and research universities. We will accept anonymized projects as a gesture of security and to establish a safe publication space/venue for all contributors. We especially welcome proposed submissions in a vast range of mediums and genres, including digital art, visual essays, collages, paintings, memoir, and essays. We encourage proposals that embrace diverse methodological and experimental stances, including collaborative works, archival research, sonic rhetorical analysis, semiosis, visual analysis/photo analysis, architectural analysis, rhetorical mapping projects, rhetorical ecologies, etc. We can also accommodate contributions that vary in length. Editors will work with contributors to determine the appropriate length based on medium, purpose, and scope.
Questions proposals for this special issue might address include the following:
- What are the kinds of academic emergencies or hurt that feminist rhetoricians have experienced? How can we reimagine the academy to make room for different ways of knowing, being, and doing?
- What methods/methodologies have teacher-scholars utilized to document institutional challenges?
- What role do archives–official or unofficial–play in recording and responding to the disarray of higher education?
- What gendered, racialized, and classist power-relations inform academic emergencies?
- What feminist interventions could be employed to improve material conditions?
- From the ashes of institutional cataclysm, how might feminist rhetorical practices disrupt mantras of crisis that seek to exclude, silence, or erase? How might we forward feminist crisis management as a mechanism to be “unwell together?”
- What are ways that we can care for each other through times of unwellness? How can we enact care in the face of such indifference?
- Because institutional crises often impact “othered” bodies more severely, how do we act to ensure their wellbeing and safety?
- How might we investigate registers of disaster and emergency response in relation to the realities of oppression and marginalization?
- What other institutional crises are on the horizon? How can we play accordingly to weather these storms?
- In what ways will institutional crises justify or rationalize further harms?
Submission Information:
Please email proposals of up to 500-words by August 1, 2025 to 2026peithospecialissue. Include a brief description of the genre and medium you intend to produce and the estimated word count.
Tentative Timeline:
Aug. 1, 2025: Proposals Due
Sept. 1, 2025: Invitations Sent
Jan. 15, 2025: Full Article Drafts Due
Mar. 1, 2026: Feedback Returned
Apr. 15, 2026: Revised Articles Due
May 15, 2026: Full Manuscript Submitted
Summer 2026: Issue Published
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. Complaint! Durham, Duke University Press, 2021.
Glenn, Cheryl. “The Language of Rhetorical Feminism, Anchored in Hope.” Open Linguistics 6,
2000, pp. 334-343.
khúc, mimi. dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss. Duke University Press,
2023.
LaFrance, Michelle. Institutional Ethnography : A Theory of Practice for Writing Studies
Researchers. Utah State University Press, 2019.
Nair, Yasmin. “Is Harvard the Problem?” Yasmin Nair. 10 April 2024.
https://yasminnair.com/is-harvard-the-problem/. Accessed 10 April 2024.
Stein, Sharon. Unsettling the University:Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher
Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022.
Patricia A. Wilde (she/her)
Associate Professor, English
Washington State University Tri-Cities