The College Language Association Journal invites submissions for a special issue inspired by Adam J. Banks’s 2016 CLA Journal essay, “Dominant Genre Emeritus: Why It Is Time to Retire the Academic Essay.” In that essay, Banks challenges writing teachers to reconsider the privileged position of the academic essay and to imagine alternative forms of composing, meaning-making, and knowledge production.

As humanities classrooms continue to evolve in response to changing technologies, student populations, and rhetorical contexts, Banks's call remains urgent. This special issue seeks to revisit, extend, and respond to the questions raised in “Dominant Genre Emeritus” through two complementary submission tracks. We welcome contributions from instructors across institution types and career stages.

Required Reading

All contributors should read Banks's “Dominant Genre Emeritus: Why It Is Time to Retire the Academic Essay,” and engage directly with its central claims and questions. “Dominant Genre Emeritus: Why It’s Time to Retire the Essay” is published in the CLA Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, 2016, pp. 179–90. You can access CLAJ through JSTOR and Project Muse. 

Submission Option 1: Questions for Adam J. Banks

We invite 3–5 contributors to participate in a roundtable conversation with Adam J. Banks. Prospective contributors will submit a set of questions that emerge from their engagement with “Dominant Genre Emeritus” and from their experiences as teachers, scholars, and writers. The editor will review and curate the submissions, arrange selected questions into a roundtable format, and invite Banks to respond in an interview-style essay.

• Interested participants should submit 5 -7 questions and a 200-word rationale explaining them to editor@clascholars.org by August 10, 2026.

Submission Option 2: Pedagogy Essays

We invite pedagogy essays (approximately 2,000–4,000 words) from instructors whose teaching practices respond to, extend, or enact the possibilities Banks imagines in a range of classes. These essays should discuss a specific assignment, project, or signature pedagogical practice that moves beyond the traditional academic essay or significantly reimagines it. Contributors should reflect on
the inspiration behind the assignment, its relationship to course goals, the pedagogical approach guiding it, and what students learned through the experience. Essays should describe the assignment and situate it within a broader pedagogical framework that engages the concerns raised in Banks's essay.

• Completed manuscripts are due September 30, 2026.
• Submit at www.clascholars.org