According to a recent World Meteorological Organization report, a significant percentage of the world’s population is facing acute water crises, with several cities likely to run out of fresh water by 2030. This inadequate access to water is exacerbated by the increasing threat of flooding around the world. Conflict over water resources and disputes between nations over issues of maritime security abound. Activists around the world from Indian to Brazil are engaged in a fight over water resources, often putting their own lives at stake. Under such circumstances, how do we imagine a just water future for our planet?

We take inspiration from bell hooks who wrote, “the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy” and thereby try to conceptualize the possibilities of a robust water pedagogy in the classroom and beyond.

NiCHE and the New Scholars Committee invite articles of 800-1200 words for a special blog series on Water Pedagogies: From the Academy and Beyond that considers the affordances of teaching about/with water in our disciplines and in activist spaces/museums/community organizations. Some of the questions that animate the series include: What does it mean to teach with water in an era of climate change? How do we teach with water beyond the frames of crisis or conflict over resources? How do we approach water in our pedagogies of transformative justice? How does digital pedagogy shape our engagement with water? What modes of water pedagogies are in practice beyond the academy?

Contributors might also write reflective articles that take up a course syllabi, an assignment, a lesson plan, a text or an activity, but we request that such articles take up a broader question or theorize a key issue in a discipline related to water pedagogy.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the relationship between water and:

• Place
• Embodied Practice
• Social Movements
• Environmental Justice
• Climate Emergency
• Literacy Genres
• Advocacy
• Digital Pedagogy
• Built Environments
• Resource Futures
• Anthropocene
• Visual Narratives

The deadline for expressions of interest is 21 February 2022 and the deadline for submission of articles is 3 April 2022. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please send an email to Sritama Chatterjee (src88 @ pitt.edu) with the subject line Series on Water Pedagogies, a two-line description of the article that you want to write, and a short bio-note.

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Feature image: Tidal archipelago, Sunderbans. Photo credit: Sritama Chatterjee