CFP: From Blueprints to Praxis: Practical Disruption in Academia and Beyond

Often, when thinking of academia, the ideas of books, writing, and theory are what make up the idea of the scholar. Many scholars who speak about activism, liberation, mutual aid, living in a collective community, and many other topics of concern for the JOAA team, do not always live the practice they write. This year, we are hoping to disrupt this focus on the blueprints of freedom and look into the way folks are working in the world to build, support, create, and live praxis in their lives.

We live in a time when our knowledge, creativity, and agency are under constant attack; disruption is not optional; it is necessary. At JOAA, we encourage writers and artists to challenge the rigid, canonized structures that have long defined scholarly legitimacy, structures that too often restrict creativity, police expression, and reproduce exclusion behind the facade of intellectual order. Here, our blueprint is not a fixed design or a narrow set of rules to be followed, but a site of critical (re)imagination where established boundaries are questioned, unsettled, and transformed. We move beyond inherited academic limitations by creating space for more expansive, creative, and disruptive forms of knowledge production that refuse to be limited within traditional frameworks. In a way, the blueprint becomes a radical practice of writing, thinking, and building in this moment, which requires intellectual courage

This year, for the Journal of Auto-Academia, we will be asking for submissions on the idea of praxis and what it means to move from the blueprints and theories that ground us in the world and put our various theories into practice. We hope to elicit submissions from scholars, scholar-activists, activists, and maybe people who don’t identify with any of these words but who are thinking about action. We hope to see submissions about how you build, sustain, and love your communities.

Our deadline for submissions for this issue is August 1st, 2026, 11:59 pm. Please email joaa@iliff.edu with the subject heading “Submission for JOAA Fall2026”. We do not standardize citation styles within the journal but ask that when you cite someone you use either MLA, APA, or Chicago style consistently throughout your document. Notification of acceptance will be on September 15th.