Civil Rights Special Issue! Change Over Time Journal
Call for Abstracts! Change Over Time Journal: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment's upcoming issue seeks to investigate the theme of "CIVIL RIGHTS WORK AS A GLOBAL STRATEGY OF RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE?" with Guest Editor Dr. Kwesi Daniels of Tuskegee University.
Communities of color around the world are places with rich legacies of culture. Their capacity to thrive
in the face of opposition is an attractive quality for scholars who are interested in understanding the
resilience of the human spirit. Legacies of enslavement, colonialization and racism have inflicted the
most insidious acts of violence, genocide and cultural erasure upon black and brown bodies around the
globe. The power structures that attack these communities are the same forces that subsequently
define them as “castrated” environments full of victims who need to be saved. The constant onslaught
of economic divestment, police brutality, environmental racism, and other conditions reinforce a
“victim” narrative in the minds of scholars who conduct research about these environments. As a result
of this false narrative, the research that emerges and community-based work that is created often
reinforces, rather than demolishes, systems of injustice.
This thematic issue of Change Over Time seeks scholars who choose to see the global network of
communities of color through a different lens. They recognize the community as their guiding partner.
These researchers wield their specialized skills in ways that uncover the beauty of the people as
reflected in heritage places and experiences. Their work becomes the salve, whose sole goal is to heal
the wounds inflicted by outside forces and it recognizes the heroism of the people, by celebrating their
culture. We are seeking proposals from global scholars whose work focuses on the inherent humanity
and heritage of the black and brown communities. This issue seeks civil rights scholarship about heritage
and its conversations that produces radical results. We seek to highlight the revolutionary spirit of
community activism that defies the demands imposed by divisive power structures. We welcome
contributions that examine questions of civil rights work in black and brown communities, like:
• What processes can be employed to give deference to the experiences of community elders?
• How do we produce community guided strategies that protect the intellectual property of
community residents?
• Where are the communities producing transformative work by involving community residents?
• How do we transform the destructive energy of injustice into a constructive force of survival, in
environments with longstanding histories of unequal power relations?
Change Over Time welcomes submissions from scholars, practitioners, and artists whose work brings a
critical perspective to the selected issue theme. After approval of a short abstract, manuscript
submissions can take a variety of forms including:
• Provocations (1,000 – 1,500 words)
• Short case studies (4,000 – 5,000 words)
• Articles (5,000 – 7,500 words, maximum 10 images)
• Photo essays (15 images and captions)
• Interviews/Profiles (3,000 – 5,000 words)
• Translations of key theoretical proposals critical to conservation discourse
We are especially interested in papers that situate preservation practice in a larger social, cultural, and
political context.
Abstracts of 200-300 words are due 2 September 2022. Authors will be notified of provisional paper
acceptance by mid-October 2022. Final manuscript submissions will be due early April 2023.
Articles are generally restricted to 7,500 or fewer words (the approximate equivalent to thirty pages of
double-spaced, twelve-point type) and may include up to ten images. See Author Guidelines for full
details at cotjournal.com, or email Kecia Fong, Editor at cot@design.upenn.edu for further information.
