CEP Pre-Con Forum

2023 Call for Proposals
Proposals Due: April 25, 2025, 4:00PM Central/Minneapolis Time

Research in Our Own Backyards: Impacts, Strengths, and Approaches

The primary purpose of CEP, as stated in its by-laws, is to facilitate the participation of scholars from ethnically and racially minoritized groups in the affairs of the Association. The CEP Pre-Conference Forum consists of two components: (1) the presentation of research/scholarly papers, works in progress, posters, performance, visual, and digital scholarship, and interactive symposia and (2) the CEP Mentor- Protégé Program, which provides mentoring/professional development sessions).

Towards that end, the CEP Pre-Conference offers opportunities for attendees to focus intensively, extensively, and specifically on issues of race, ethnicity, and racism, and the intersections of racism with other interlocking systems of oppression. It recognizes the urgency of not only decentering whiteness, but imagining other ways of being and knowing that deliberately attend to the needs, dreams, and desires of People of Color. 

The 2023 general conference theme, Higher Ed Research: Purposes, Politics, & Practices, centers Gwendolyn Brooks poem, “a song in the front yard,” as a request to look beyond our front yard. We build on the theme by including the poem in its entirety: 

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.   
A girl gets sick of a rose.
 
I want to go in the back yard now   
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.   
I want a good time today.
 
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.   
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae   
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
 
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace   
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

The remainder of the poem aligns with the nuances of engaging in research that looks beyond the well-tended roses and calls us to question the purpose for looking beyond well kept yards. The theme acknowledges that looking beyond the roses comes with “implications, with danger, and with uncertainty;” we envision this year’s CEP pre-conference as a space to highlight the work of Scholars of Color whose purpose for being in academia has been to engage in research beyond the roses from a place in the academy that has always been dangerous and uncertain. We lean into Gwendolyn Brooks' wild and mysterious backyard by boldly reframing Scholars of Color akin to the weeds and wildflowers. Rather than perform respectability with a fear of being categorized as “bad” or “unruly,” we call each of you to reconsider the front yard of the academy and embrace the backyard’s medicinal properties, resilience, and tenacity. With this in mind, we consider:

1. What have been the impacts that Scholars of Color encounter when engaging in this work? And, how do Scholars of Color navigate such impacts? 
2. How can this call to look beyond the front yard center the scholarship of Scholars of Color who often face marginalization and are already engaged in this research, particularly those who come from teaching institutions and colleges that were not intended to conduct research?  
3. What are the implications of an open invitation for all scholars–those historically excluded from the front yard and/or those too distracted by the front yard– to enter the “backyards” and “alleys” where “rough and untended and hungry weed grows?” 
4. How do we engage in such a call while reducing the potential harm of unqualified, well-meaning scholars from the majority to engage in this work? 
5. When engaging in this work, how can the scholarly community decenter colonized research methods and embrace, cultivate, foster, non-dominant, indigenous, and non-western forms of art-based collaborative inquiries?

CEP is a deliberate counter space to think about and prioritize what matters most to us, as racially and ethnically minoritized people, and those we serve; to celebrate the experiences and developments of those with whom we co-create knowledge with; and to create impactful and culturally-sustaining approaches that address the needs of communities in our own backyard. This year, we seek to facilitate a pre-conference that invites new questions, validates the complexities and intersections of racial and ethnic identities—and the experiences encountered as a result thereof—and invites the creation of tools that enable us to reimagine knowledge production as life-affirming. 

The CEP Pre-Conference Forum peer-review process reflects high expectations of rigor and quality. Sessions selected are those that expand, challenge, and shift the field’s thinking, practice, and praxis. We welcome proposals that engage in critical analyses of hegemonic whiteness and white supremacy, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, ethnocentrism, and cisheteropatriarchy through systemic and structural lenses. Proposals that confront racism’s entanglement with other interlocking structures of marginalization and privilege (e.g., social class, ability, sex assigned at birth, gender identity and expression, sexuality, religion/spirituality/faith, and global/transnational) are especially encouraged. 
 
Proposal formats accepted

2023 Tentative Schedule

Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Tentative Time: 8:30am-7:30pm Central/Minneapolis Time
Hilton Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota

View the full schedule for the 2022 CEP Pre-Conference. If you missed the 2022 CEP Pre-Conference, you can purchase on-demand access to the recorded content through May 1, 2023.

2023 Registration

Contacts

2023 CEP Pre-Conference Program Co-Chairs:

• Vijay Kanagala, Salem State University, vkanagala@salemstate.edu
• Nancy Acevedo-Gil, California State University, nacevedo-gil@csusb.edu
• Charles H.F. Davis III, University of Michigan, hfdavis@umich.edu 

If you have technical or logistical questions about submitting a proposal or the pre-conference:

• Email ASHE Conference Staff at conference@ashe.ws
• Call the ASHE Office at (202) 660-4106