about us.
mission.
The Critical Theory & Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research (CTSJ) offers a transformative space for undergraduate students to engage critical theory in the pursuit of social justice. Undergraduate students are uniquely poised to propel new ideas: critiquing, engaging, and creating new spaces of intellectual thought and activism while building upon a rich history of criticism and political action. Critical theory is an innovative, diverse body of responsive theories, capable of advancing social justice as a commitment to exposing and ending social inequalities. Engaging multiple axes of identity and expanding innovative theory, such as Bataille’s radical definition of Transgression or Ngai’s imaginative aesthetic theory, our Journal advances transdisciplinary essays and artwork that do not fall for shallow solutions or terminal truths. Our Journal extends this work in the visual power of art, a secondary space beyond the boundaries of language. In the profound and everyday, we find novel opportunities for theory and political exploration. The Journal believes that an undergraduate student should not be a passive recipient of knowledge, but an active producer of critical thought; their research and methods are capable of producing original juxtapositions and transgressing the boundaries of staid research. It is our hope that the essays, art, and interventions found within our journal will foster an exchange of ideas across disciplines to deepen understandings of systems of injustice.
contact us.
We can be reached at ctsj-journal@oxy.edu.
Our office is in the Weingart building on the campus of Occidental College, in Los Angeles.
staff.
G.A.E. Griffin, Lead Faculty Editor
Venitia Boyce '19, Managing Editor
Sam Clendenning '18, Lead Student Editor
editors.
Chelsea Blair '18
Will Dean '18
Marcus Forbes '18
Julian Halpern '20
Marshall Meyer '18
Dalia Quezada ' 20
Skye Reed '20
Hope Roehrs '20
Gabrielle Seiwert '18
Karim Sharif '18
James Wronoski '18
Margaux Ziss '18
art editors.
Haelan Nunn '19
Olivia Tenney '19
poetry.
Ariadne Makridakis '20, Lead Poetry Editor
social media.
Bex King '18, Social Media Coordinator
graduate advising editors.
Tania Flores 2013
Zachary Ehmann 2014
Michelle DiBattiste 2015
Ashley Ajayi 2015
Tim Lewis 2017
copy editor.
Karen DeVivo
graphic designer.
Katya Tepper
external peer reviewers.
Peter Lee, City University of Brooklyn College 2017
Matthew Filpi, Gonzaga University 2017
Justin Cajanding, Stanford University 2019