2026 Main Call
Journal of Language and Literacy Education Call for Submissions
The spring 2026 issue of JoLLE will include both a special themed section responding to the above call and an “open submissions” section. Consider submitting your work. We encourage early submissions, and will begin reviewing in December 2025, with January 16th, 2026 being the final submission deadline.
Special Themed Section for the Spring 2026 Issue
Resistance Amidst Crisis: Searching for Hope in Language and Literacy Education
In an era marked by censorship, political attacks on educators, and the silencing of marginalized voices (American Library Association, 2023; PEN America, 2022), we–the new JoLLE editorial team—desire to foster reparative scholarship. Inspired by Eve Sedgewick’s (1997) discussion of reparative readings–meaning readings that are situated in love, generosity, surprise, and hope as opposed to paranoid readings grounded in anxiety and suspicion—we seek scholarship focused on hope and optimism for the future of education and teaching. We invite submissions that center research exploring the abundant and diverse ways in which language and literacy educators cultivate hope, joy, and resistance. We seek scholarship that moves beyond simple identification of problems to examine the important work of reparative forms of resistance that sustain educators, students, caregivers, and communities. We invite researchers, practitioners, and scholars at all levels to submit empirical research, theoretical papers, content analyses, practitioner inquiries, and innovative methodological work that addresses our theme of optimism and resistance in the field of education.
Submissions can address, but are not limited to, the following questions:
- How can hope, joy, and happiness be established and maintained in the field of language and literacy education to better serve students? How can educators in the field of language and literacy education aim to cultivate empathetic pedagogies and methodologies in today’s classrooms?
- Considering the multitude of voices that comprise our classrooms, in what ways can the field of language and literacy incorporate those voices in their learning? In a time when censorship is prevalent, how can the field of language and literacy situate itself in a reparative lens and frame of thinking and teaching?
- How can out-of-the-box pedagogies and new methodologies be incorporated in language and literacy education to inspire optimism?
- How can language and literacy educators practice resistance in their classrooms and pedagogy?
References:
American Library Association. (2023). State of America’s libraries report 2023: Special report: Book bans. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2023
PEN America. (2022). Educational gag orders: Legislative restrictions on the freedom to read, learn, and teach. PEN America. https://pen.org/report/educational-gag-orders/
Sedgwick, E. K. (1997). Paranoid reading and reparative reading; or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this introduction is about you. Novel gazing: Queer readings in fiction, 1-37.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Interested in viewing our feature calls? Click here
