UC Press is pleased to announce that Departures in Critical Qualitative Research’s editor Devika Chawla’s inaugural double special issue, Migrations/Borders and Margins, has been selected as the winner of the National Communication Association’s 2019 Ethnography Division Best Special Journal Issue Award.
From the review committee’s feedback: “The award winner provided a clear and relevant purpose for the issue. Through the article selections, Devika Chawla reveals that migrations ‘can be experiences of survival, providing lessons on learning to gain a semblance of control over our lives and eventually thrive’ (Editor’s Introduction, p. 2). The message is uplifting and hopeful during a time when positivity and hope are needed and seemingly in short supply. Also, this double issue reveals how a sub-area of our discipline, critical studies, often labeled as dark, depressing, and/or negative, can offer new ways of seeing, i.e., new perspectives on phenomena–ideally, one of the benefits of ethnography.”
Chawla is a professor of communication studies at Ohio University, and her research focuses upon communicative, performative, and narrative approaches to studying family, home, and its relationship to social identity.
“I am thrilled to see our inaugural double-issue receive this award,” notes Professor Chawla. “While the idea was mine, the vision was fulfilled by the excellent contributions of scholars from diverse fields who also illustrated a plethora of critical and creative qualitative methodologies in their submissions. Our goal is to continue to showcase topics and themes that are relevant to both academic and mainstream audiences.”
“I was trying to focus attention on the ongoing crises of displacement the world is witnessing. These crises have created refugees, migrants, immigrants, exiles the world over. After I knew I was taking over as the Editor, I wanted to commit to a set of inaugural issues on this theme. It seemed natural, but also necessary, given our geo-political surround. I view the double issue as an opportunity to ask academics and writers from different fields and disciplines to engage the notion of migration in their personal and professional work. I am very pleased and excited about the contributions. I believe the writers delivered poignant, thoughtful, even heartbreaking essays.”
For more on the special double issue, read “Migrations: A Q&A with DCQR Editor-in-Chief Devika Chawla.“
About DCQR
Departures in Critical Qualitative Research publishes peer reviewed, innovative, experimental, aesthetic, and provocative works on the theories, practices, and possibilities of critical qualitative research. We welcome and showcase state of the art work in performative writing, performance texts, fictocriticism, creative nonfiction, photo essays, short stories, poetry, personal narrative, autoethnography, and other arts-based critical research. We are deeply committed to publishing interdisciplinary qualitative work that engages postcolonial and transnational perspectives in both local and global contexts. To this end, Departures seeks to publish critical and innovative qualitative work on contemporary political and social justice issues such as climate change, food insecurity, the refugee crisis, #BlackLivesMatter, #metoo, immigration, DACA, LGBTQ rights, indigenous rights, among others. We actively solicit and invite participation from minority, international, women of color, and immigrant scholars who are doing innovative, poetic, autoethnographic, decolonial, fictional, and other creative work from their various contexts, positions, and locations. We welcome and encourage informal queries.
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