Place-based Positionality and the Public Sphere

As individuals, we occupy multiple identities that are contextually situated and dynamic, being continuously amended and reproduced. These positionalities influence our personal and professional lives. They are also political points of departure. The environments we live and work in are important and often understudied components of this positionality, joining race, class, gender, and other aspects of identity to affect what we and others see, hear, know, and document.

Building on the scholarship of writers such as Linda Martín Alcoff, Paula M. L. Moya, Satya P. Mohanty, Michael Hames-García, and Marisa Elena Duarte, this panel explores the ways that current debates on identity politics intersect with the public sphere, impacting the ways we teach, research, and create. In the midst of revived debates on academic freedom, the time is ripe for a reevaluation of this critical standpoint. This panel invites papers that explore the place-based positionality of the researcher or the researched as a foundational component of historical interpretation, artistic practice, theoretical inquiry, and/or pedagogy that promotes diversity and inclusion.