CALL FOR PAPERS
The COVID Care Crisis Symposium, Part II:
Imagining Solutions and Taking Action
June 16-17, 2022
Virtually on Zoom
Submit abstracts
Deadline extended to April 25!
CALL FOR PAPERS
June 16-17, 2022
Virtually on Zoom
Submit abstracts
Deadline extended to April 25!
The COVID Care Crisis Symposium held in January 2021 convened dozens of scholars to theorize about what the organizers labeled as the unfolding “COVID Care Crisis” and its effects on legal academia. During that two-day event, scholars, teachers, students, and practitioners shared the difficulties of managing the demands of work and the constantly shifting changes to care infrastructures. The Symposium amplified the voices of caregivers and sounded the alarm on how disparities, if left unaddressed, could alter the landscape of academia long into the future and further marginalize women and scholars of color as well as other primary caregiving faculty and staff. Many speakers published their Symposium papers in a just-released volume in FIU Law Review as well as in other venues.
As we enter the third year of COVID, we see in schools, workplaces, and public spaces a push to “return to normal.” Schools at all levels are now mostly back to in-person instruction; masking, testing, and other protective measures are declining or disappearing. Yet caregivers remain in a bind, with limited options or institutional support. COVID outbreaks continue as do school closures. Moreover, with the end of masking, people with disabilities and immunocompromised people, as well as their caregivers, are in a precarious position. Young children have not been vaccinated and remain vulnerable. And the effects of long COVID are only now being studied. The negative impacts of the pandemic are falling hardest on marginalized students, faculty and staff and their families.
Yet institutional and structural responses have been minimal or lacking entirely. Even the simplest accommodations from the early stages of the pandemic are now harder to obtain. For many the conditions of employment have become so unacceptable that they have led to an exodus from formal or in-person work. The losses in research, knowledge production, career progression and even visibility that were predicted for caregivers as the pandemic began have materialized, but have been generally met by silence. The collapse in work-life balance is ongoing, but no longer a subject of discussion. While many of us have returned to work, work has changed and yet the challenges have remained or even intensified.
This second symposium seeks to take stock of COVID responses and to re-envision the workplace, to imagine the future of work, and to dream new realities for the academy. For legal academia, what has changed? And if change has not come, why not? And for the future, what changes can we envision and implement—individually, collectively, and institutionally? The hard work of rebuilding, renewal and re-imagining has begun, and we invite you to join us in naming, theorizing, and building solidarity to meet these challenges.
Please submit your micro-abstract of no more than 250 words below by April 25, 2022. Your abstract should include your name, title, institution, email, presentation title, research abstract, and three to four keywords.
We actively encourage scholars to spend no more than 30 minutes jotting down notes, creating bullet points, drafting one paragraph of ideas, or excepting draft scholarship for the abstract. Participants are encouraged to think creatively and need not be confined to a particular format for either abstracts or final papers. Caregivers, women of color, disabled professors, those in the LGBTQ community, junior scholars, aspiring faculty, white women, and others from marginalized populations are especially encouraged to submit. The authors of selected abstracts will be notified by May 15, 2022. Essay drafts of roughly 5,000 words will be due June 10, 2022.
There will be no registration fee for presenters or other participants in order to maximize engagement and inclusivity. Panels will be grouped by theme and topic. The organizers are actively seeking a publication venue for accepted papers, with expected publication in 2023.
Professor of Law, Florida International University; Founder, Critical Legal Academics and Scholars International Collective (CLASIC)
Email Prof. ChoudhuryThe Honorable Vaino Spencer Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School; Affiliated Faculty, American Bar Foundation (ABF); Director, Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE)
Email Prof. DeoSenior Assistant Dean, Curricular and Undergraduate Affairs; Diversity Officer; Director, International Law and Institutions Program, Hamilton Lugar School & Maurer School of Law
Email Dean Rana