The International Mad Studies Journal Special Issue CFA
Title: Maddening The Academy
Guest Editors:
Meaghan Krazinski (she/they), Syracuse University
Jersey Cosantino (they/them), Syracuse University
Jennifer Poole (she/her), Toronto Metropolitan University
May Friedman (she/her), Toronto Metropolitan University
Call For Abstracts:
The academy (noun): A place. A body. A collection of bodies, of bodyminds that bend/are bent toward who and what is considered “normal”. Never neutral, always operating in the context and coordinates of space and time including histories of in/access(ability).
The academy often functions to suppress, oppress, invalidate, and erase m/Mad knowledges, ideas, thoughts, and expressions, while at the same time producing forms of madness by pathologizing ways of being that exist outside the boundaries of “normal”.
The academy is a geopolitical space that reproduces itself and extends its control beyond the physical campus, while entwined in legacies of violence that reflect how education and the medical-industrial complex are always and have always been tools of white supremacy, ableism, sanism, and colonialism.
Yet, while seeking to distance itself and rid itself of m/Madness, the academy encircles itself around it, quite literally, in its histories and investments in control of Mad/mad(dened) people, leaving traces of these hauntings (Gordon, 2008) and becomings in its wake.
In this special issue of the International Mad Studies Journal, we seek to explore how Mad Studies, bodyminds, knowledges, meaning-making, thoughts, ideas, creativity, and imaginations, engage in an ongoing process of m/Maddening the academy and being m/Maddened by the academy. We operate from a shared understanding that the academy is rooted in the glorification of a particular colonial, white supremacist, neoliberal, Western, Global North ideological and political context and we seek to transgress this. Therefore, we invite a multitude of definitions of what the academy is, has been, and can be. We are especially grateful to scholars Juan Carlos Cea-Madrid and Tatiana Parada for their 2021 article “Maddening the Academy: Mad Studies, Critical Methodologies and Militant Research in Mental Health” from which the title of this special issue pays homage.
We invite submissions from individuals with complex and multifaceted m/Mad(dening) relationships to the academy, including folks who were excluded from the academy, who rejected the academy, who found home and community within the academy, who long/ed for the promises of the academy, who helped to carve more accessible pathways through the academy, who seek to watch the academy burn once and for all…the list is endless.
The ways that we, as guest editors of this special issue, practice and dream of m/Maddening the academy and hold space for the stories and felt-sense experiences of those m/Maddened by the academy are made possible because of histories of global activist and community-based resistance to psychiatrization, and the controlling, harmful practices of the psy-disciplines. Thus, a m/Maddening of the academy encompasses an infinite array of experiences and perspectives, backgrounds and identity intersections, pasts and presents, all the while perpetually seeking m/Mad(dened) futures that are liberatory for all.
Abstract Submissions:
We encourage abstract submissions to this special issue of the International Mad Studies Journal, “Maddening the Academy,” by December 15, 2023 via email to mkrazins@syr.edu. If alternative dates are helpful, we welcome these requests. Abstracts should:
Estimated Publication Timeline (that also honors m/Mad time, Crip time, queer time, etc.):
Accessibility: Please note that we intend this special issue to also take up a process of m/Maddening academic outputs. As a result, we are open to processes which may make submission and contribution to this issue more accessible, nourishing and open to all. Please let us know what specific processes, including timelines, can best support your engagement.
Final Submission Formats: In addition to traditional scholarly writing, we welcome arts-based, poetic, musical, autobiographical, photographic, and other non-normative contributions. Because the journal is entirely virtual, video, audio and other creative formats and offerings can be distributed and are warmly welcomed. We request that you include a brief written/recorded description of your arts-based contribution that highlights the submission’s connections to the special issue theme and personal significance. Contributors may choose to have their submission peer reviewed or reviewed only by editors. For more information, please feel free to reach out to us.
Final Submission Word Count: There is no minimum word-count for scholarly writing submissions of finished articles. We do ask that you please not exceed 5,000 words and to reach out to us directly if your piece will likely exceed this word count.
For more information on this special issue, including possible themes and topics that we welcome you to explore, please feel free to reach out and we would be happy to share a longer, more detailed call for abstracts.
Possible Submission Topics: For some examples of possible submission topics, please explore the link to this document (click here).
Guest Editor Bios:
Meaghan Krazinski: Meaghan (she/they), is a doctoral student in Special Education at Syracuse University with advanced study in women’s and gender studies. They seek to privilege neurodivergent ways of knowing as a means of resisting the pathologizing logics of the academy. Their most recent work investigates the relationships between healing, trauma, race, and disability labels. They also have a forthcoming work on the topic of Autistic understandings of gender and identity. Meaghan is white, multiply neurodivergent, and has education, class, and citizenship privileges with English as a first language. They hold a master’s in inclusive special education and a certificate of advanced study in disability studies from Syracuse University.
Jersey Cosantino: Jersey Cosantino (they/them), a former K-12 educator, is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University, completing certificates of advanced study in women’s and gender studies and disability studies. Jersey’s scholarship resides at the intersections of Mad studies and trans studies and, utilizing disability and transformative justice frameworks, their research centers the experiences and subjectivities of Mad, neurodivergent, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals. Through oral history and autoethnography, Jersey seeks to construct Mad trans archives that create pathways and portals to Mad trans futures, imaginaries, and elsewheres. Using Mad trans methodologies that challenge sanism, ableism, and transmisia, Jersey’s research confronts medical model discourses and the pathologizing gaze of the psychiatric industrial complex. Jersey identifies as Mad, neurodivergent, queer, trans, and non-binary and is white with class, education, and citizenship privilege. They are a co-facilitator for SU’s Intergroup Dialogue Program and a co-editor of the International Mad Studies Journal. Jersey holds a master’s degree in high school English education (‘14) and a graduate certificate in mindfulness studies (‘19) from Lesley University, and a bachelor’s degree in English and studio art from Wellesley College (‘09).
Jennifer (Jen) Poole (she/her) is a white, first generation settler to T’karonto (Treaty 13). Jen identifies as M/maddened and along with race, class, education, employment, citizenship, language and other privileges, lives with disability, pain and fear. As an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University, Jen’s work sits in the confluence of madness and grief, and while companioning learners is Jen’s professional priority, current (re) search projects focus on grief in the classroom, sanism, care, decolonizing education and knowledge. Jen is also a settler trainer for the Centre for Indigegogy at Wilfrid Laurier University, a Fellow at the Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research at the University of Toronto and a Teaching Fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University. Additionally, Jen is a proud bonus parent, a TEDX talker and a long time community peer supporter. Jen is happiest outside.
May Friedman: May Friedman (she/her) works as a faculty member at Toronto Metropolitan University. May’s research looks at unstable identities, including bodies that do not conform to normative tropes of race, ethnicity, ability, size, beauty and health. Most recently much of May’s research has focused on intersectional approaches to fat studies considering the multiple and fluid experiences of both fat oppression and fat activism. Drawing on a range of arts-based methods including digital storytelling as well as analyses of treasured garments, May has explored meaning making and representation in relation to embodiment and experience.