In the face of violence, acts of witness are crucial to reaffirm the humanity of those that have been dehumanized, rebuild social worlds, and assert new communal bonds. At the same time, efforts at witnessing are fraught with risk. Personal testimonies may increase feelings of isolation instead of yielding catharsis. Writers, scholars, and artists who strive to represent acts of violence risk turning suffering into spectacle and re-inscribing binaries of agency versus victimhood. No act of witness can encompass a person’s experience; there is always more to know than any narrative or representation could portray.

In July of 2016, Niantic Inc. released Pokémon Go in the United States to unanticipated public interest. In one of the hottest summers on record, millions took to the streets to search for charmanders and dragonites, overwhelming both servers and public spaces. While interest in the mobile application has subsided, Pokémon Go remains a cultural artifact that demands further analysis. Opening conversations on public and civic rhetorics through play, the phenomenon of this simple game exposes critical intersections of race, gender, ability, and class as technological concerns over access, privacy, and privilege.

Papers addressing the difficulties of students for whom academia is foreign, considered in terms of the student’s alienation, psychological unpreparedness, underdeveloped perspective, etc. How can such students be incorporated into academia, and thereby into work (and life broadly) made accessible by education? Alternatively, should we seek such incorporation, or instead reimagine and change academia, and how? Institutions have implemented a variety of assimilation and retention strategies, some with better records than others. Some programs engage students individually, whereas others emphasize building communities; some strategies focus on key first-year courses, such as introductory writing.