CALL FOR PAPERS

2025-05-01

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the AMAE Journal
Community Resistance and Educating in an Authoritarian Climate

Guest Editors: Dr. Patricia D. López (California State University, Fresno)

                          Dr. Sergio F. Juárez (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo)

Submission Deadline: March 2, 2026

For inquiries and submissions, please contact Patricia D. López: pdlopez@csufresno.edu and Sergio F. Juárez (sfjuarez@calpoly.edu).

Call for Paper Special Issue PDF

Rationale and Significance:

While it may seem that the recent surge of nationalist and authoritarian policies in U.S. education is novel, such agendas have deep historical roots in colonial education systems and continue to operate as the status quo in many local contexts (Anzaldúa, 1987; Quijano, 2000; Duany, 2002; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). These agendas reflect long-standing efforts to discipline, assimilate and racialize Indigenous heritage and immigrant-origin communities, shaping which students are considered legitimate, whose knowledge is valued and who belongs in the public sphere (Gramsci, 1971; Delgado Bernal, 2002; MacDonald, 2004; Valencia, 2008; Abrego, 2014).

For the purposes of this special issue, authoritarianism in education is understood as a policy and governance project that concentrates power in the hands of state and managerial elites, narrows the boundaries of legitimate knowledge, and imposes ideological conformity through intensified oversight, standardization and the suppression of dissenting pedagogies or communities (Apple, 2013). Authoritarian policies manifest through the policing of knowledge, censoring curricular content, curtailing academic freedom and centralizing administrative authority, all of which restricts educators, learners and communities from shaping learning on their own terms (Apple, 2013; Kumashiro, 2024; Lipman, 2011). Rooted in long-standing structures of colonial education and cultural imperialism, authoritarian policies in U.S. schools and universities often intersect with neoliberal and nationalist agendas, advancing privatization, exclusionary ideologies and social control under the guise of efficiency, standardization or “national interest” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014; Au & Ferrare, 2015; O’Neal & Bridgeforth, 2025).

Agendas such as Project 2025 and Project Esther are examples of consolidated federal, state and local-level strategies pushing to privatize public education, centralize control over people, censor curricula and police knowledge (Kumashiro, 2024; Lipman, 2011; Au & Ferrare, 2015; O’Neal & Bridgeforth, 2025). These ideological attacks demonstrate the multi-pronged temperament of authoritarian education agendas that hold profound legal, social and economic consequences and remind us that education continues to be a primary terrain where settler colonialism is maintained.

At the same time, communities across the U.S. and globally are actively resisting authoritarian encroachments. Students, educators, families, unions, and grassroots organizations carry forward a long history of cultural, epistemic and political action that reclaims education as a space for human dignity, solidarity and collective well-being. This special issue centers these counter-narratives and acts of resistance, inviting analyses that uplift lived experiences with authoritarian conditions and community responses to contest and transform them.

We welcome multidisciplinary contributions such as empirical research, policy analyses, theoretical essays, testimonios, community-based reflections and other creative scholarly forms.

Key Themes and Topics

We invite critical and interdisciplinary contributions that engage frameworks such as: Critical Race Theories (CRT/LatCrit), decolonial and Indigenous epistemologies, feminist and queer theories, performance theories, critical disability studies, abolitionist frameworks, counter-narrative and testimonio methodologies and transnational solidarity approaches. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Legal Implications: Erosion of civil rights protections (Title VI, Title IX, IDEA); policies that tie educational access to legal status; restrictions on academic freedom and curricular autonomy; and community strategies to resist authoritarian encroachments.
  • Social Implications: Curriculum censorship targeting ethnic studies, bilingual education, LGBTQ+ history and culturally sustaining pedagogies; impacts on teacher autonomy; the policing of identity, language and community knowledge; and school climate issues.
  • Economic Implications: Privatization, charter expansion, austerity budgeting and resource extraction from HSI, MSI and Tribal Colleges; labor insecurity among educators.
  • Community Resistance: Student, parent/family and union organizing; testimonio, counter-storytelling and cultural resistance; and interfaith, multiracial, transnational and intergenerational solidarities.
  • Comparative and Global Perspectives: Authoritarian education agendas in international contexts, lessons from borderlands and Indigenous movements, migrant justice work, and transnational solidarities advancing humane and liberatory educational futures.

Timeline:

  • December 17, 2025: Call for papers announced
  • March 2, 2026: Abstracts and full manuscripts due to co-guest editors
  • March 30, 2026: Authors notified if their manuscripts will proceed to be peer-reviewed
  • March 30-May 15, 2026: External peer reviews conducted.
  • May 15-May 31, 2026: Authors complete initial edits and revisions
  • June 1, 2026: Authors submit revised manuscripts
  • June 1-July 1, 2026: Co-guest editors conduct another review and request additional revisions if needed.
  • July 2026: Final editing, formatting and copyediting by the AMAE Journal Managing Editor
  • August 1, 2026: Online publication date

 

Manuscripts should be submitted as follows:

1. Submit via email both a cover letter and a copy of the manuscript in Microsoft Word to Dr. Patricia D. López at pdlopez@csufresno.edu and Dr. Sergio F. Juárez at sfjuarez@calpoly.edu.

2. A cover letter should include name, title, short author bio (100 words), and institutional
affiliation; indicate the type of manuscript submitted and the number of words, including
references.

3. Prepare the manuscript for anonymous peer review. Authors should make every effort to
ensure that the manuscript contains no clues to the author's identity. The manuscript should
not include the author's name, institutional affiliation, contact information, or
acknowledgments. (This information, however, should be included in the cover letter at the
time of submission.)

4. Manuscripts should be no longer than 6,000 words (including references) and include an abstract of 200 words or less. Please follow the formatting guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition).

For inquiries and submissions, please contact Patricia D. López: pdlopez@csufresno.edu and Sergio F. Juárez (sfjuarez@calpoly.edu).

References
Abrego, L. J. (2014). Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders. Stanford University Press.

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.
Apple, M. W. (2013). Can education change society? Routledge.

Delgado Bernal, D. (2002). Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 105–126.

Duany, J. (2002). The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States. University of North Carolina Press.

Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous peoples’ history of the United States. Beacon Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder & Herder.

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, Eds. & Trans.). International Publishers.

Kumashiro, K. K. (2024). Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice, 4th edition. Routledge.

López, N. (2008). Invisible no more: Understanding the disenfranchisement of Afro-Latina/os. Temple University Press.

MacDonald, V. (Ed.). (2004). Latino education in the United States: A narrated history from 1513–2000. Springer.

O’Neal, D., & Bridgeforth, J. (2025). Reading Between the Lines: Neoliberal Racism and K‑12 Education Policymaking. The Urban Review, 57, 785–808.

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580.

Valencia, R. R. (2008). Chicano students and the courts: The Mexican American legal struggle for educational equality. New York University Press.