We are pleased to announce the CFP for a special 2026 issue of Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (ALRA) on Art & Engagement as Critical Response (300 word proposal deadline: 1/16/26). In the spirit of recognizing the ongoing precarities of higher education–both internal (neoliberalism, systemic institutional inequities) and external (crisis of public confidence in U.S. universities/colleges, threats to academic freedom), we invite proposals for a special issue of ALRA on art and engagement as critical response to the invisibility, illegibility, and silencing faced by much of the academic labor force. The issue will feature a gallery of scholarly essays and creative visual/performing art that explores the vital contribution of art and arts-based engagement to the intellectual work of higher education.
We encourage submissions that theorize, reflect upon, innovate and critique the practices and discourses of academic labor through a creative/engaged lens. This special issue will advance conversations about the ways that art and creative practice and engagement, broadly defined, can simultaneously work to document, challenge, analyze, observe, resist, redefine, and transform the ways that institutions perpetuate invisible and expected faculty and staff labor. We invite submissions that document experiences, offer reflections, reveal historical patterns of inequity and/or absence, and project alternative futures. The work included will span disciplinary research practice to include creative works, written expression, performance, and interdisciplinary pieces. We invite proposals of around 300 words including 1-2 images for visual or performing work and/or direct links to the creative work online (not a general website). Read the full CFP here (due 1/16/26): suzanne.faris) and Tobi Jacobi (tjacobi) with questions or for additional information.
Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (ALRA) is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal launched in 2016 by the Center for the Study of Academic Labor (CSAL) at Colorado State University. The journal encourages ongoing research on matters relating to tenure and contingency in the academy, both nationally and internationally. Along with our center and web site, we offer a research home for those undertaking scholarship in areas broadly defined as tenure studies, contingency studies, and critical university studies.
Tobi Jacobi (she, her)
Professor, English Department
Director, Community Literacy Center
Director, Writing, Rhetoric, and Social Change MA program/Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy BA concentration
Department of English
Eddy 349 | Campus Delivery, 1773 | Fort Collins, 80523
My workday may look different than your workday. Please do not feel obligated to respond outside of your usual working hours.