Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts is now accepting submissions for possible publication in the upcoming issues.

Spring 2016 Issue

Issue Theme: Signs of the Times

Submission Deadline: January 11, 2016

The world is changing rapidly. The Internet’s presence is progressively more pervasive. Digital literacy practices have become more self-directed, such as the use of Instagram, Snapchat and other instantaneous personal digital texting and smartphone literacies. There has been a greater emphasis in some school systems on teaching for “college and career readiness.” Civil rights issues have taken greater precedence in recent political discourse worldwide.  Have educational institutions kept up with such disruptive sociocultural changes? This issue of Ubiquity explores these and other recent “signs of the times” as they are addressed in literature, literacy, the arts and art education:

• What are the “signs of the times” in our communities, local and global, and how are they affecting literature, literacy, and the arts?
• What recent cultural developments affect how we read, write, communicate, and/or create?
• How have recently prominent social issues affected how we teach and how students learn?
• Which historically marginalized groups (minorities, women, the LGBT community, etc.) are gaining a greater voice and which are facing greater persecution? How are these groups educating others about their circumstances through literature, literacy, and the arts?
• How has technology changed the way we read literature and look at art?
• What are the affordances and challenges of online learning and social media communication as relevant to literature, literacy, and the arts?
• As high schools and universities struggle to be ever more inclusive of differing perspectives, and especially of differing groups, how has the struggle not to offend clashed with the desire for open and unrestrained artistic conversation?

Fall 2016 Issue

Issue Theme: Exploring Performative Arts

Submission Deadline: September 1, 2016

In this issue, we explore the full range of performative arts, including theater, dance, music, performance art, spoken word, and others. While we might think of “performative arts” as encompassing overtly staged performance, there is more to the idea of the “performative.” Think, for example, of Erving Goffman (1959), who wrote of human interaction as a kind of performance. There is a great deal to be said, then, for defining the term “performative” broadly, through these and related questions:

• Exactly what are the performative arts, beyond what might traditionally be labeled so?
• How is teaching an act of performative art, in the classroom, community, and elsewhere?
• How are multiple literacies engaged in the performative arts?
• What is performative about being a student?
• How are reading, writing, and visual arts performative, even when no one is watching?
• What is the role of the audience in experiencing the performative arts?
• How does the rapid growth of digital media change the nature of performance?
• What is the connection amongst the performative arts, language use, literacies, and identity formation?
• How are performative arts culturally situated? Do some performative arts exist in some cultures and not others? How can we introduce certain performative arts into cultures that had previously not known or enjoyed them?

Reference

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Anchor.