American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies
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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF CURRICULUM
STUDIES ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2026
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Priority Submission Deadline: March 22, 2026 (Midnight, EST)
Last Call for Submissions:
April 26, 2026 (Midnight, EST)
AAACS invites you to submit a proposal for our 25th Annual online-only convening!
Curriculum as Subversive Praxis:
Theorizing and Resisting Violent Enclosure and Extraction
Writing of the order of things, Joshua Myers (2022), in his book, Of Black Study, states that “order is management, and to keep disorder at bay, humans must be managed” (p. 140). The increasing neoliberalization of public schools and universities serves as a representation of the force placed upon people in America to preserve an exploitative and dominative order. The weight of militarization in society as greater resources has become siloed away from the public and common good toward military and paramilitary troops, like United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has coerced public discourse, especially concerning education. Since President Donald Trump became inaugurated for the second time in 2025, the defense budget of the United States grew to $1 trillion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 from the requested $852 billion in FY 2025. ICE, on the other hand, grew by roughly $75 billion over the coming years from a budget of just under $10 billion in FY 2024. Meanwhile, there have been more than $1 trillion in cuts to medical care for disproportionately underserved groups, including children. Similarly, the Department of Education is subject to consistent cuts, the most recent high-profile reduction being the Office of Special Education Programs. The President called upon the National Guard to enforce an order to address the manufactured “crisis” of cities presumably in chaos (Berliner, 1996). Unsurprisingly, such a manufactured crisis has been called upon to enact policies which further discipline marginalized communities, especially in those that are majority Black and Latinx. Through the historical use of discipline and austerity measures on the most marginalized, the country laid the groundwork for its policies against the public at large. As Burns (2017) reminds us, presciently, the precondition for the militarization of cities within this manufactured crisis were politicians prior to Trump welcoming excess brutalization and expansion of power through the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America, and Asia.
The order imbued in militarization made its way into schools both within physical space, but also in terms of curricular control and the assault on public discourse. The surge of authoritarianism in and among the public relies upon the material and the symbolic as civil freedoms remain under assault, children get taken from their parents, protestors disappear from the public, ideas get legislated out of K-12 and higher education classrooms, the erosion of norms created for the benefit of the public, and a persistent genocide in Gaza. The goal, it appears, is the “colonization of the cultural imaginary” which so normalizes present circumstances that reality becomes reduced to nothing more than a society inscribed by control, discipline, blind obedience, fear, depersonalization, and violence (Wynter, 1989, p. 639).
However, the world is not silent, as Grumet (1988) notes, and curriculum scholars must not be either. In these moments of destabilization and dispossession, our recurring nightmare of the present which has followed us from the past, what does it look like for us to research and theorize as a “community of resistance,” which both considers and subverts those circumstances (Guillory, 2012, p. 15; Pinar, 2004)? What theoretical and analytical tools exist already within the curriculum field as forms of subversive praxis, as moments of "fugitivity" that erupt every moment of violent enclosure and extraction (Moten, 2013, p. 26; Givens, 2023)? How has our field failed to speak to the current moment?
Themes, Topics, and Questions to Consider:
● In what ways does curriculum theory itself reproduce silence and how can it be disrupted?
● What everyday acts of subversion already exist within educational contexts?
● How do the arts and media operate as tools of resistance or reimagination in curriculum?
● What is subversive praxis and how can the field of curriculum studies intervene?
● How can curriculum studies inform k-12 practice for administrators, teachers, and other school workers in the current moment?
This call for papers reflects the imperative for ethical relationality. As Alan Block (2004) notes, study is a way of being that embodies relationality. Perhaps this capacity reflects not only the rejection of a path or end as such, but the commitment to refusal or fugitivity as well, of the oath to imagine another way to be with each other entirely. We seek proposals which speak to this call to explore how curriculum studies understand the urgency of the present alongside how the field can move forward to speak to a future otherwise.
References
Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis. Addison-Wesley. (Published also by Harper Collins and Perseus Books).
Block , Alan A. 2004 . Talmud, curriculum, and the practical: Joseph Schwab and the Rabbis. Peter Lang.
Burns, J. P. (2018). Power, curriculum, and embodiment: Re-thinking curriculum as counter-conduct and counter-politics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Givens J. R., . (2022). Fugitive pedagogy. Harvard University Press.
Grumet, M. R. (1988). Bitter milk: Women and teaching. University of Massachusetts Press.
Guillory, N. (2011). Moving toward a community of resistance through autobiographical inquiry: Creating disruptive spaces in a multicultural education course. Multicultural Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1001530
Harney, S., & Moten, F. (2013). The undercommons: Fugitive planning & black study. Minor Compositions.
Myers, J. (2023). Of black study. Pluto Press.
Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Lawrence Erlbaum.
Wynter, S. (1989). Beyond the Word of Man: Glissant and the New Discourse of the Antilles. World Literature Today, 63(4), 637–648. https://doi.org/10.2307/40145557.
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2026 Conference
Online Only June 25-27, 2026
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Proposal Submission
To submit your proposal, click on the submission form below.
Proposals will include a maximum 500 word abstract (excluding references)
Proposals are due April 26, 2026
Faculty/Independent Scholar
Registration Fee ($90):
The American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS), a non-profit organization since 2017—the American affiliate of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS) —was established to support a "worldwide"—but not "uniform"—field of curriculum studies. Our hope, in establishing this organization, is to provide organizational support for a rigorous and scholarly conversation within and across national and regional borders regarding the content, context, and process of education, the organizational and intellectual center of which is the curriculum.Type your paragraph here.
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