Departures in Critical Qualitative Research
Inaugural Issue
Title: Dis/Comfort and Liminal Negotiations (Tentative)
Editor: Kakali Bhattacharya
University of Florida
Email: kbhattacharya@coe.ufl.edu
For the last two years, the world has been dealing with a global pandemic, exacerbated with multiple other
interconnected pre-existing structural, socio-cultural inequities, and oppression. These conditions have
created or exaggerated liminal existence, where our presence in numerous middle/third spaces illuminated
complex negotiations. These liminal spaces have been transnational, of being here and there, or the blurring
of home and work, creating a hybridized space of living and working, and many others. There are other
spaces of in-betweenness that the pandemic and other structures of inequity have identified, exposed, or
created hyper-awareness or visibility.
For some, these liminal spaces of existence intersected with multiple structures of oppression have been an
ever-present reality. Yet, an intentional focus on this reality to disrupt the normalization of such oppression
creates various experiences of dis/comfort. Experiences of dis/comfort exist in the liminal spaces between
comfort and discomfort. This hybridized term can also represent the aspirations for comfort and living in the
materialization of discomfort and shuttling between the two. Dis/comfort can also mean one’s ability to sit
with discomfort and normalize an ambient co-existence with discomfort while craving restoration, healing,
and peace. We leave the conceptualization of dis/comfort broad and mutable by the authors who write for
this issue.
In this editorial inaugural issue, we invite authors interested in exploring liminal dis/comforts informed by
the pandemic and other intersected structures of oppression. While we have a broad conceptualization of
dis/comfort, some guiding questions for the special issue can include, but are not limited to:
1. If dis/comfort can be on a spectrum, how does one negotiate their location, existence, agency, and healing?
2. How do the ongoing media and visual culture inform liminal existences and dis/comforts?
3. What is evoked, provoked, silenced, highlighted when we witness or become aware of mass deaths,
cremations, and suffering on a personal, professional, local, national, and international level?
4. How could meditations on dis/comfort reveal ways in which privileges and positionalities unfold?
5. What might be some ruptures that emerge from liminal existence and negotiating dis/comforts?
Authors are encouraged to submit writing from situated perspectives involving any genre of critical
qualitative research of their choice. These choices can also represent a departure, disruption, creativity,
methodological innovation, and a need for restoration.
We welcome and encourage experimental writing that
breaks tradition.
Important Dates
Abstract 200-words due – February 20th, 2022
Full article deadline – April 15th, 2022
Final revisions due – May 15th, 2022 (hard deadline)
Abstracts should be no more than 200 words. Abstracts should be formatted according to the 7th edition of
the American Psychological Manual guidelines. Abstracts should be emailed as Word documents to
dcqrjournal@gmail.com.