Call for Papers:

Alabama State University 

College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 

Research and Creative Activity

2023 International Hybrid Symposium 

RCAS 2nd Annual International Hybrid Symposium 2023 Topic:

Empowerment

“Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions…. we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”  – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, quoted from The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holliday

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 15 November 2022

Submit your Abstract to: RCAS@alasu.edu 

Submissions encouraged from faculty, graduate students, and professionals.

Acceptance Response: 31 December 2022

Conference Dates: 28 – 29 March 2023

The symposium will take place as in-person/virtual and entirely virtual sessions.

You may participate in this symposium virtually with the link we will make available on the ASU RCAS website, or in person on the ASU campus. If you choose to participate in person, your work will be simultaneously shared on Zoom with virtual conference participants. 

• Please note: Your safety is paramount. Alabama State University follows strict CDC guidelines and procedures to protect everyone in the ASU community. Since Fall 2021, ASU has been a mask-mandated campus.
• We appreciate your participation and look forward to hosting you in person and/or online in the Spring 2023 Research and Creative Activity International Hybrid Symposium. 

The Spring 2023 symposium will explore topics concerned with empowerment.

By this we mean empowerment construed both broadly and narrowly: personal, social, political, cultural, etc. We welcome work across the curriculum.

Last year, the ASU C.L.A.S.S. RCAS International Hybrid Symposium explored the topic of Pandemic. This year, we look at the crises that confront us, globally, locally, and personally, and at the ways we respond to these urgent and important issues, how we find ways to overcome impediments and adversity.

The RCAS Committee suggests topics below, but the conference is not limited to these topics. Feel free to apply with topics not listed, but that are related to Empowerment.

• Community and Shared Experience,
• Cooperative and/or Collective Action. Examples include:

-       Environmental issues and initiatives --

• Bounds on use and disposal of plastics,
• Bounds on greenhouse gas emissions
• Development of Renewable Resources
• Protection of wildlife, water, air

-       Health and Human Wellbeing

• Use of vaccines to curb diseases like polio, monkeypox, COVID, flu, etc.
• Food security
• Access to the Power Grid
• Access to the Internet
• Local and Global Human Migration Issues
• Global human trafficking
• Access to guns (this is meant to encompass whatever point of view on this issue you may hold).
• Body Rights: the human right of body sovereignty –
  • Access to safe abortions
  • The right to die
  • Protection from abuse (physical, mental)
  • Gender negotiation
  • Etc.
  • Systemic Issues of Race, Class, Gender
    • in the media,
    • in law and issues of justice,
    • in education,
    • in healthcare,
    • in the arts
    • etc,
• Education as a means to better one’s life, economic position, choices, status
  • Education as self-discovery, discipline, development, actualization

growth, awareness: sports, dance, arts, sciences, etc.

• Education for community development
• Media literacy and social activism

Email a short 200 – 250 word abstract of your work to: rcas@alasu.edu 

Abstract Due Date: Wednesday, Wednesday, 15 November 2023

For Individual Papers Include: 

Your Name 

Your Institutional Affiliation 

Your Contact Email 

• Please submit an abstract of about 250 words, MLA-formatted, to explain your work: your research, thesis, performance type or presentation type, creative mode, etc. 
• Include your preference for your presentation to be in-person/online or online only.

For Group Presentations/Panels Include: 

Names of all participants

Institutional Affiliations of all participants 

Contact emails for all participants 

• Please submit an abstract of about 500 words to explain your panel and/or performance. 
• Include your preference for your presentation to be in-person/online or online only.

We will review submissions and respond by: 31 December 2022 

Submissions encouraged from Faculty, Graduate Students, and Professionals. 

Contact email: RCAS@alasu.edu 

Contact Persons: Dr. Lynne Schneider, Chair of the RCAS Committee 

Dr. Ivon Alcime, Vice Chair of the RCAS Committee