As an interdisciplinary formation with anti-disciplinary investments, CES publishes a range of manuscripts, some of which employ methods from academic fields whereas others emerge out of political movement work. Some might be creative, experimental, or provocative in nature. While we plan to have one special issue and open general issue each year, periodically we publish an additional special issue in place of an open general issue in order to address issues of unfolding urgency. All article-length submissions are subject to peer review.
Peer-Reviewed Essays: Essays (between 6,000 and 10,000 words) should be prepared according to the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style using endnotes and submitted electronically. Please submit manuscripts in Microsoft Word. Author’s names should not appear on manuscripts. Instead, please include a separate document with the author’s name, email, work address, the title of the article, and abstract (250 words) with your electronic submission. Authors should eliminate any self-identifying information (such as notes or credits). References to the author’s work should be in third person.
Dispatches: Dispatches from the field are brief (2000 - 3000 words) and timely reflections sharing strategies and broader lessons that emerge from real-time advocacy. Recent examples of dispatches that we have accepted include short pieces discussing the impact of attacks on critical ethnic studies in the university and the impacts of cuts to USAID funding. If you are interested in submitting a dispatch on a timely topic, please reach out to the managing editor in advance of submission.
Forum: Departing from the traditional book review format, each CES issue features a forum on a recently published book--or cultural work--that marks new directions in critical ethnic studies. Four to five scholars in ethnic studies or affiliated fields are invited to comment, in 1-2,000 words, on the work in question from various perspectives. The forum engages the main arguments and theoretical contributions of the featured work, while posing additional questions and signaling new lines of inquiry opened by the work. The author(s) or creator(s) are then invited to respond to the short commentaries. The forum features single-author monographs, co-authored books, and anthologies, as well as cultural works in a variety of media.
Interviews: Each issue features an interview with an activist or activist collective organizing around racial justice. The interview enables the journal to highlight critical ethnic studies work beyond the academy and to illuminate organizing approaches toward and perspectives around politically pressing, contemporary issues.
Work-in-translation or Work from/about the Global South: CES is actively working to feature non-English-language scholarship, as well as research produced within or about the Global South. To this end, each issue features one work-in-translation or one piece from or about geopolitical locations not typically studied within the field of critical ethnic studies. By bringing attention to this scholarship, we hope not only to move the field not just in more robustly transnational directions but also to galvanize its internationalist possibilities.
Political-education Document: Each issue features a curated political-education document--a manifesto, pamphlet, archival document, website, etc.—that is framed by a short introduction (500 words or less) by someone steeped in that particular political educational trajectory. This element of each issue reflects our mission to honor the radical liberatory roots and to highlight the insurgent pedagogical possibilities of ethnic studies as a field.
Syllabus: CES hosts a syllabus--either collectively drafted or individually authored--in each issue as part of the journal’s commitment to political public education. The syllabus should speak to areas of pressing concern, emergent significance, or undertheorization in the field of critical ethnic studies. Syllabi authors are invited to write an introduction curating the syllabus for our readership, as well as to provide hyperlinks--in the interest of access--to materials in the syllabus. By treating syllabi as publications in their own right and vital tools in liberatory education, CES recognizes them as products of considerable intellectual labor whose political significance extends beyond traditional academic spaces.