Call for paper for a Special issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies

Educators in Popular Culture: Educational Settings as Sites of Intersectional Struggle

Special Issue Editors: Jennifer Esposito and Tanja Burkhard

Popular culture is an educative space and, as such, we learn about ourselves and others

through our engagement with popular culture forms (Edwards & Esposito, 2020).

Expressions of popular culture that highlight educational settings, specifically schools and

institutions of higher education, can oLer insight into how these settings, their functions,

and their power dynamics are perceived in various contemporary societies. Moreover,

analyses of these texts and expressions can also illuminate the processes through which

the state works to conform popular culture to dominant culture (Hall, 2006). For example,

recent attacks on what and how educators in U.S. K-12 schools and higher education

institutions highlight the importance of investigating the power of these representations on

societal perceptions, discourses, and social identities. Further, global student movements

in support of the Palestinian people, as well as the institutional backlash to these

movements, produced new hashtags, memes, and other popular culture texts in various

languages and locales. Recognizing the need for popular culture scholarship that

analyzes, highlights, and deconstructs local, global, and transnational cultural

expressions through critical lenses, the central theme of this special issue of Review of

Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies would explore how various forms of popular

culture (film, television, streaming, literature and digital media) portray educators and s

chool leaders and how these representations help shape public discourse of

the K-12 educational space and/or higher education. Papers could investigate such issues

as:

• In what ways are K-12 teachers depicted as navigating burnout and why?

• How are popular culture texts framing the issue of educators’ mental health?

• How are popular cultural texts engaging, critiquing, or representing insurgent

knowledges in light of reinvigorated far-right discourses, propaganda, and politics in

many societies?

• How are satirical texts providing a cultural critique of education systems?

• In what ways are educational leaders (principals, superintendents, deans, etc.)

portrayed and what do we learn about leadership and power?

• How have neoliberal values influenced the representations of teachers?

• How are educators and leaders portrayed as advocates of participants in broader

social justice movements?

We are interested in a variety of methodological approaches including:

Intersectional analysis

Textual/visual analysis

CRT and feminist analysis

Cultural studies and/or (critical) discourse analysis

Comparative and historical approaches

We would also be interested in papers that explore the pedagogy of critical media literacy

in the classroom and how teachers/professors are navigating that space while under

assault.

We invite initial abstracts (500 words) with brief author bio or inquiries with the subject

heading REPCS Special Issue Proposal to jesposito@gsu.edu and tburkhard@gsu.edu.

Final papers should be 5,000-7,000 words and use APA style citation and references.

Proposed Timeline:

Call for Papers Released: October 15, 2024

Abstracts Due: November 30, 2024

Invitations for Full Manuscripts: December 15, 2024

Submission Deadline for Full Papers: March 15, 2025

Peer Review Completed: May 15, 2025

Revised Papers Submitted: July 15, 2025

Final Manuscripts Due: September 15, 2025

Publication Date: Fall 2025

References:

Edwards, E. & Esposito, J. (2020). Intersectional analysis as a method to analyze popular

culture: Clarity in the matrix. Routledge.

Hall, S. (2006). Popular culture and the state. In Sharma, A. and Gupta, A (Eds.) The

anthropology of the state: A reader,9, 360.