Critical Posthuman and Postfoundational Studies in Education

The theme for the 2027 annual meeting, “Transcending Borders and Boundaries in Education Research: Toward a Beloved Global Community,” invites us to think more deeply and more critically about the meaning of community, not only as scholars, but also as people in a time of rising authoritarianism, genocide, and war. Critical, poststructuralist, and critical posthumanist work in education research shares commitments to questioning underlying--and often unspoken--assumptions about what reality is, how we come to produce knowledge of it, and whose knowledge counts as legitimate. Questioning authority and power are inevitably acts against the status quo, and oppressive regimes push back on any challenge to power. 

We acknowledge that the academy is imbricated in the workings of power, and we, as a SIG, aim to disrupt such academic power structures by learning together that critique in this space need not mean disparagement, dehumanization, consumption, or the devouring and dividing up of the “spoils” of our theorizations. To hold beloved community in one hand and loving critique in another requires careful synthesis, the holding of incommensurabilities, and profound respect and reciprocity (Archibald, 2008).  Indigenous and Métis authors such as Liboiron (2021) and Snyder (2022) teach us about practices of reading generously, understanding the offerings of our community members as gifts. 

The Critical Posthumanist and Poststructuralist Studies in Education Research SIG was formed originally as the Foucault SIG; as the trajectory of the SIG progressed, efforts to expand beyond White, Eurocentric theoretical traditions prompted the SIG to re-name itself in 2024. This SIG aims to center the work of emerging, early-career, and graduate student scholars, as well as scholarship from the Global South and the work of scholars from historically marginalized communities. As Wynter (1994) asserts, the category of “human” itself has depended upon the exclusion of Black people from that category, and White, Eurocentric scholarship, even (and perhaps especially) in the posthumanities has too often done the same in terms of whose work is valued, read widely, cited, recognized, and considered canonical. 

We work as a beloved community to abolish hierarchies on ontological, epistemological, methodological, and axiological levels (Jones et al., 2020; Love, 2020). We center the impacts of our scholarship and research on marginalized communities. We push one another’s thinking, onto-epistemological, and ethical commitments toward ever-deepening justice. 

To this end, we particularly invite proposals that question the underlying logics and assumptions of borders and boundaries on onto-epistemological, methodological, and axiological levels. We invite work that draws on the insights of scholars in multiple disciplines and sub-disciplines. We aver that theory and praxis are intra-active (Barad, 2007), and we invite work that is explicit in its political commitments. We particularly invite work by graduate students, early career and emerging scholars, scholars from the Global South, BIPOC scholars, and all those whose practices within the critical posts strive for onto-epistemological justice.

We explicitly invite proposals by scholars whose work sits primarily within Indigenous studies, Black studies, Disability studies, Womxn’s and Gender studies, Queer Theory, Environmental studies, Science and Technology studies, and/or other related fields. We offer some ideas to spur imagination as you consider boundaries, borders, and beloved community of/in your own inquiry:

• What borders must be reimagined or dismantled in pursuit of onto-epistemological justice? How do disabled, Indigenous, Black, queer, and Global South scholars challenge dominant regimes of evidence and legitimacy? What can critical posthumanist, Black, Indigenous, Disability, and queer theories teach us about the limits of the category "human"? How do/could educational institutions participate in or resist colonial-capitalist systems of accumulation?
• How do walls—physical, symbolic, ecological, educational—shape belonging and exclusion? What can ecological projects such as living walls (e.g., the Great Green Wall), restoration efforts, and environmental infrastructures teach us about community and coexistence?
• How do maps (e.g., “expansion” of America to include Greenland), memes (e.g., “Gulf of America”), narratives (e.g., ICE and deportations), and other digital representations create realities rather than merely describe them? What can redlining teach us about the enduring educational geographies of race, space, and power? What educational possibilities emerge when Indigenous territories disrupt nation-state maps?
• What forms of knowledge become (im)possible under boundaries of political repression? In what ways do grants, metrics, and rankings function as technologies of boundary-making? 
• How do language and discourse establish the boundaries of what can be said, known, remembered, or forgotten? Who benefits when educational discourse narrows, and who is silenced? 
• How is artificial intelligence redrawing educational boundaries among knowledge, expertise, labor, and authority? Where does the teacher end and technology begin? How do algorithms and costs of technological progress (e.g., data centers, digital surveillance) create new forms of inclusion, exclusion, visibility, and disappearance?
• How are boundaries between "research" and "non-research" constructed, defended, and contested? How might methodologies travel, wander, leak, or mutate across traditional boundaries?
• How might “beloved community” require both boundaries and their continual interrogation? What forms of inquiry become possible when critique is practiced as generosity, reciprocity, and care?
• What is the "dirty work of boundary maintenance” (Nira Yuval-Davis, 2006, Belonging and the politics of belonging), and who performs it?

Proposals addressing the yearly theme are encouraged; however, we invite all proposals that contribute meaningfully to the conversation. We invite scholars from all divisions and SIGs. 

The AERA online submission system is now open, and details about the formal call for proposals and submission deadlines are available on the AERA website.

Please share this call for proposals with all who may be interested. The number of proposals and the size of our active membership determine the number of sessions allocated to each SIG.

Please consider our SIG as a place to share your work and renew your SIG membership when you submit your proposals. Encourage students and colleagues to join our SIG, too. All information about the annual meeting can be found at AERA.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your program co-chairs, Dr. Gretchen Goode and Dr. MaryJohn Pachuta-Rysak!

Thank you and see you at AERA 2027!

Dr. Gretchen Goode, University of Southern Mississippi
Dr. MaryJohn Pachuta-Rysak, Grand Valley State University