Black mattering (Love, 2019) is an elusive project that grapples indefinitely with the anti-Black insistence on life as social death. We understand anti-Blackness as sinister and always already metamorphosing its next iteration. We hope for this special issue to come to a transdisciplinary understanding “of what Black freedom wants [and] what Black freedom requires of us” (Dumas, 2018, p. 35). This special issue assumes that, as educators and practitioners, we exist in the “next time” (Baldwin, 1963, p. 89), and have a unique responsibility to teach from that place. As such, we follow a lineage of texts that have believed in the import of centering Blackness, particularly Black women, as the fulcrum of an anti-oppressive society (see Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977).
To be considered for inclusion in the special issue, prospective authors must first submit an abstract of 500 words (maximum) by November 1, 2020.