“Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve pleasure and that our social structures must reflect this. In this moment, we must prioritize the pleasure of those most impacted by oppression.
Pleasure activists seek to understand and learn from the politics and power dynamics inside of everything that makes us feel good.”
adrienne maree brown in Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019)
“To be sure, players are thinkers; but they also are movers. This combination leads to acts of doing and making—not only of objects of many types but also of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Involvement in such activity produces more than intellectual discernment. It leads to excitement, fun, and, perhaps in its most sublime manifestations, joy.”
Henricks, T. S. (2020). Play Studies: A Brief History. American Journal of Play, 12(2), 114–155.
It seems like every day a new disaster begins as older ones fester. Through compounding environmental and social abandonment, structural racism and inequality, war and genocide, and disappearing higher education budgets, we are still asked to show up at work.
In light of everything that feels bad in the world, ACRL/NY’s 2025 symposium theme asks: what feels good in LIS? How do we find joy, or at least contentment, in our jobs? Let’s indulge together and learn from our library pleasures. Using adrienne maree brown’s 2019 book Pleasure Activism and the practice of play as jumping off points, let’s talk about how feeling good might make us more thoughtful, effective, values-driven, or justice-oriented LIS practitioners. We also welcome critiques of the idea of joy at work and the productive tensions between work under capitalism and finding joy in work.
Proposals might take the form of reflecting on a work project or a more theoretical approach, potentially conversant with LIS literature, play studies, gender studies, ethnic and race studies, disabilities studies, critical pedagogy, movement studies, or other disciplines.
Questions to consider:
Where do you find fun, pleasure, or joy in your work? How do you fit this practice into your daily activities?
How do you facilitate pleasure, joy, or feeling good for your patrons, library users, researchers, or students?
How do pleasure and enjoyment create better programs, projects, outcomes, or experiences for library workers and users?
How can or does pursuing play or pleasure in LIS work lead to more justice, more value alignment, or more liberation for us and our constituencies?
Who is allowed to play at work in LIS? Who is not?
What attracted you to the LIS field? Are you still pursuing that attraction? Why or why not? Who and/or what motivates you to keep working in the LIS field?
How would you arrange your work if you had all of the support, resources, and time you needed?
How do we navigate combating vocational awe (Ettarh 2018) and finding fulfillment at work?
How do you navigate factors that prevent you from experiencing pleasure, joy, or play at work? What better ways do you imagine for your work?
What has the ability or freedom to play allowed you to create, develop, and/or expand on in your work?
Potential topics include:
Teaching, Learning & Reference
Collection Development
Archives & Special Collections
Acquisitions
Preservation
Metadata & Cataloging
Access Services
Community & Outreach
Digital Scholarship & Scholarly Communications
Labor
AI, machine learning, automation
Free time, Work life balance
Organizing
Tenure or promotion process
LIS Research
Strong proposals will address the theme, have a title, and clearly relate to at least one of the above listed topics. We encourage presentations that are engaging, interactive, and conversational.
Optional early submissions deadline for feedback: 4/14/2025 at 9am Eastern time. Early review will provide clarifying questions and respond to the proposal’s thematic relevance so that the applicant can revise their proposal if they choose; all finalized submissions will be reviewed together at the final deadline.
Final submissions deadline: 5/16/2025 at 9am Eastern time
Submission Options (presenters may be grouped by topic with other presenters)
