(via Leah Morin, Michigan State University)
Have you had an experience in the classroom, a reference consultation, or other teaching interaction where a subtle shift in attention, a pause to give space for internal processing, or a choice to value presence over the plan resulted in an unexpectedly meaningful learning moment? Whether you knew it or not, you were likely engaging in emergent strategy, and we would love for you to share your story and your voice in a new collection, Emergent Strategy in Library Instruction: Stories, Reflections and Imaginings, forthcoming from Library Juice Press in 2026 and edited by Leah Morin and Hazel McClure.
This book is inspired by adrienne marie brown’s concept of emergent strategy, a feminist, afrofuturist exploration of human relationships to each other and nature, responses to change, and our capacity to dream for and enact more just and beautiful futures.
The emergent strategy core principles brown illuminates in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, published by AK Press, are summarized as follows:
- Change is constant. Be like water.
- Small is good, small is all. The large is a reflection of the small.
- Less prep, more presence.
- What you pay attention to grows.
- There is a conversation in the room that only these people in this moment can have. Find it.
- Move at the speed of trust: focus on critical connection more than critical mass.
- Trust the people. If you trust them, they become trustworthy.
- Never a failure, always a lesson.
- There is always enough time for the right work.
We’re open to pieces of varying lengths, genres, and formats, but in all pieces we’d like it to be evident where the connection is to an emergent strategy, and how this approach led to learning. For more information and a link to our proposal submission form, please see our official call for proposals. Proposals are due by Friday, June 21, 2024.