Equity and Excellence in Education Special Issue

Chicana/Latina Testimonios: Methodologies, Pedagogies, and Political Urgency

Guest Editors: Dolores Delgado Bernal, Rebeca Burciaga, and Judith Flores Carmona

The genre of testimonios has deep roots in many oral cultures and in Latin American human rights struggles. The publication of Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (2001) almost a decade ago, demonstrates how Chicanas/Latinas have taken up the art of testimonio as a relatively new genre within academia that draws from a theory of the flesh and situates the individual subject in connection with a collective experience marked by patterns of domination, subordination, and/or resistance. Chicana/Latina scholars have addressed methodological concerns, enacted new forms of political agency, reclaimed authority to assert voice and presence via their own testimonios, or served as the interlocutor for the subaltern voice.

Within the field of education, the use of testimonios has resulted in new understandings about how marginalized communities respond and resist dominant culture, laws, and policies that perpetuate inequity. Testimonios serve as a pedagogical, methodological, and activist tool that has the potential to create discussions across difference and power relations.

This special theme issue aims to bring attention to methodology, pedagogy, research, and reflection on testimonios within a social justice education framework. It is also meant to provide a forum for the testimonio scholarship that addresses the political urgency needed to address educational inequity within Chicana/o/Latina/o communities. We welcome manuscripts that offer research findings, theoretical perspectives, methodological discussions, and pedagogical reflections concerning (but not limited to) the following areas:

• Interdisciplinary scholarship that offers a bridge between educational scholarship and cultural studies, Chicana/o studies, Native/Indigenous studies, and/or gender studies;
• Testimonio scholarship that addresses intersectional perspectives based on sexuality, gender, immigration status, language proficiency, race/ethnicity, and class.
• Methodological scholarship that addresses testimonios in relation to issues such as represent-tation, narrative authority, truth, or a repositioning of power for researcher and subject;
• Scholarship that addresses the power and concerns of using testimonios as a pedagogical tool inside or outside the walls of educational institutions;
• Testimonio scholarship that addresses alternative ways of knowing including the body, spirit, pain, or space as sources of knowledge;
• Engaged participatory action research, youth studies, or immigrant studies that employ testimonios;
• Teacher or teacher educator research that addresses testimonios in relation to new curricular and pedagogical practices; and
• Testimonios of Latinas/os in elementary, secondary or postsecondary education.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Follow Instructions for Authors on our website (https://www.eee-journal.com). In addition, please include a cover letter indicating that this submission is for the Testimonios special issue. We are excited to offer the possibility of a MULTIMEDIA publication (color photographs, videos, and audio) to enhance written submissions—the written submission must be able to stand entirely on its own. If you wish to publish media with your article, indicate where in the text you intend to link to other media (and what form that medium is), but do not, at this point, submit media files.

Mail submissions by April 15, 2011:

Visit the journal’s website
Equity & Excellence in Education
370 Hills South
111 Infirmary Way
UMAss, Amherst, MA 01003

 

Please address questions to all three Guest Editors Dolores Delgado Bernal (ude.hatuobfsctd-4e2bee@lanreBodagleD.seroloD), Rebeca Burciaga (ude.usjsobfsctd-405a65@agaicruB.acebeR) and Judith Flores Carmona (ude.erihspmahobfsctd-91cecb@SScfj). This special issue is due to be published in August 2012.