AERA Queer Studies SIG

Statement of Commitment, Action, and Solidarity

The Queer Studies SIG of AERA enthusiastically states our commitment to racial justice, anti-racism, and the declaration that Black Lives Matter. The lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, and all Black lives murdered matter. We acknowledge that both our SIG and the field of Queer studies in education have been complicit with white supremacy and left undone necessary racial justice work while all-too-often centering and maintaining whiteness in our work, our organizations, and our scholarship. As a field, we have lost our historical roots in BIPOC queer and trans activism. Additionally, we acknowledge that our current SIG leadership does not include Black scholars, very few members of Color, and historically and currently is a predominantly white SIG.  Further, this lack of inclusion has been complicit with and perpetuated anti-Blackness, oppression, and resulted in a paucity of intersectional scholarship--especially those centering anti-racist and justice-oriented analyses and critiques.  

As a SIG, we are committing to doing more than empty acknowledgments to this moment and standing with the current protest movements happening in all 50 states and across the world. We are committing to the deeper introspective work of how we have contributed to, benefited from, and reified anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and white supremacy, even in our quest to dismantle cisheteropatriarchy.  We also strongly declare our solidarity with the struggle against police violence, state-sponsored violence, and the enduring white supremacism, anti-blackness, and racist violence across our society, our schools, and even our scholarship. We also commit, as a SIG, to several initial steps that we will take, including:

• Effective immediately, the Queer Studies SIG will consider scholarship's engagement with race, racism, anti-racism, and intersectionality as a key review criterion for all conference proposals submitted to the SIG. The SIG program chairs will develop materials, in collaboration with others, to educate reviewers about the SIG's expectations in this regard. A revised CFP is attached to this message. 
• Beginning with the 2020-21 awards cycle, the Queer Studies SIG will consider scholarship's engagement with race, racism, anti-racism, and intersectionality as a key review criterion for all awards, including the Dissertation of the Year, Article of the Year, Body of Work, Student Travel Grant, and Community Activism Grant awards. We will also explicitly prioritize work that engages anti-racism, queer of Color, quare, and other race-conscious and race-centering approaches.
• Our 2021 program will include programming on anti-Blackness in queer studies at the annual meeting. While we are working out the details of how this will happen and what form that it will take, we are committing at this moment to make this initiative a central feature of our programming.
• We will support Black Lives Matter through a monetary donation of $1,500, the equivalent of our standard annual meeting budget, in support of ongoing racial justice work. We encourage our members to also, individually and collectively, financially support Black-led justice organizations, including queer and trans advocacy groups. 

While none of this can make up for the past, we hope that these actions initiate ongoing and lasting changes to our SIG and for the field. 

Signed,

AERA Queer Studies SIG Executive Committee

Kamden Strunk, Chair

A Longoria, Co-Chair

Sam Steigler, Program Chair

Stephanie Anne Shelton, Program Co-Chair

Bridget Maher, Secretary/Treasurer Chair

Michael Bartone, Secretary/Treasurer Co-Chair

Ryan Schey, Awards Chair

Michele Dow, Awards Committee Member

[All confirmed executive committee members as of June 6^th, 2020, signed this statement, while several appointed positions are still in process]

AERA Queer Studies SIG Call for Papers