EDI-tation: Rethinking and Revolutionizing the Graduate Student Experience

deadline for submissions: 
September 15, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Northeast Modern Language Association(NeMLA)
contact email: 

While graduate school has long been a space for cultivating generations of academics, researchers, and intellectuals, it has never been exempt from the dynamics of power that underlie the workings of the University. Recent strides at improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in graduate school—for example in the form of the rise in number of sociopolitically- and culturally-cognizant programs, the push towards increasing international student populations, and the rise of grassroots movements such as labour unions to improve representation—belie the reality that universities remain set up according to ideological lines that facilitate the success of some graduate students while (re)producing the inequities experienced by others.

 

This roundtable seeks a diverse group of participants with insights on how to negotiate issues around equity, diversity, and inclusion in graduate student-centric and life-affirming ways. Of special interest would be actionable strategies and programmatic ways that unravel the complex layers of lived experience that intersect with our roles as both students and employees who are also gendered, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, parents, immigrants, graduate students with disabilities, mature graduate students, and people across various socioeconomic strata. Some possible topics might include:

- identifying strategies on leading a balanced, fulsome life as a graduate student with investments beyond the university;

- reframing narratives around professionalism in academia as it ties to university norms like dress codes or self-presentation in academic spaces;

- creating institutional programs around a wellness model, whereby wellness is seen as the absence of inequity, or otherwise as mitigating barriers to equitable access towards a full graduate student experience;

- developing non-traditional approaches to EDI training for graduate students;

This roundtable seeks a diverse group of participants with insights on how to negotiate issues around equity, diversity, and inclusion in graduate student-centric and life-affirming ways. Of special interest would be actionable strategies and programmatic ways that unravel the complex layers of lived experience that intersect with our roles as both students and employees who are also gendered, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, parents, immigrants, graduate students with disabilities, mature graduate students, and people across various socioeconomic strata.

Please submit proposals of 250-300 words, with a bio of at most 100 words, on how you intend to address one or more of the talking points above. For inquiries, please contact gsc@nemla.org.

For more information or submit an abstract, please kindly visit: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21295