Journal of Family Theory & Review, published by NCFR, invites articles on the topic of theorizing and doing critical intersectional Family Science for publication in a special issue.

Special Issue:

Theorizing and Doing Critical Intersectional Family Science

Submission deadline extended: Nov. 1, 2024

The Journal of Family Theory & Review (JFTR) invites articles for a special issue on theorizing and doing critical intersectional Family Science. The roots of intersectionality are grounded in conversations, community, theorizing, and activism of Black women who found that the liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s did not fully address their concerns and needs. In 2014, Black feminist family scholar April Few-Demo wrote a comprehensive review about the utility and necessity of using intersectionality in Family Science in Journal of Family Theory & Review (JFTR). It was not only a call for Family Scientists to embrace an intersectional paradigm in research design, but this call also came with a warning about what could happen with an open adoption of intersectionality by those not closely tied to feminist roots:

(a) the erasure of any connection to Black feminist epistemology and intellectualism;
(b) the conflation of comparative studies design with intersectional design; and
(c) an omission of explicit social justice aims from the research in spite of intersectional design claims.

In the 2022 JFTR special issue on "Transformative Family Science," Hunter, Tarver, and Jones declared that with advancements in theory and methods, Family Scientists were richly poised to conduct transformational Family Science, which centers peripheral experiences and testimonies and prioritizes an integration of reflexivity, accountability, and responsibility in participatory and collaborative knowledge-building while simultaneously interrogating axes of power, settler conscientization, and epistemic hegemonies. We invite authors to consider how intersectionality has evolved, tensions within the theory and with other critical theories, institutional barriers to teaching intersectionality, challenges to applying and operationalizing intersectionality in research and best practices, the state of intersectionality in Family Science, and how intersectionality might be studied given current sociohistorical contexts and cultural narratives. This call asks authors to consider how intersectionality has been utilized and how the next generation of Family Scientists can extend the theory and its practical and methodological applications.

Examples of key topics guiding the special issue are:

• Challenges to binary thinking in the study of families and close relationships using an intersectional lens
• Challenges to applying and operationalizing intersectionality in research and best practices
• Providing examples of theoretical extensions of intersectionality theory and epistemological tensions
• Analyzing how current oppressive policies and laws intersect with social identities to (re)create and institutionalize inequities in terms of healthcare and educational access and human rights
• Theorizing social justice and integrating an intersectional framework in building and sustaining praxis
• Theorizing family processes and legal status among transnational, migrant, and displaced populations
• Critical reviews and meta-analyses related to intersectionality (JFTR does not publish empirical studies)

Manuscripts are now due by Nov. 1, 2024. The special issue will be published in December 2025. Submit manuscripts via the Manuscript Central submission portal at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jftr. Be sure to note that the submission is for this special issue. For detailed manuscript preparation guidelines, please refer to http://www.ncfr.org/jftr/submit-jftr.

For more information or to discuss submission ideas, please contact the special issue's editors:

April Few-Demo: [email protected]

Veronica Barrios: [email protected]

Dana Weiser: [email protected]

Special Issue Call