Contestants must reach out beyond academe and connect with a popular audience in terms of accessible language and attractive presentation. Submit an issue that seeks to achieve the democratic mission of higher education. The journal editor must include a paragraph in the cover letter explaining why the submitted special issue is exceptional. Submissions without the editor’s endorsement will not be considered. A journal may submit only one special issue for this award.

• 2022: The Hedgehog Review (Spring 2022), "Political Mythologies"

• 2021: Journal of Asian American Studies (24.1), #Wetoo: a Reader, guest edited by erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan

• 2020: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 63, no. 1, special issue on CRISPR, guest edited by Neal Baer

• 2019: Aztlan for “Gringo Injustice”

• 2018: The Hedgehog Review for the special issue on "The End of the End of History?"

• 2014: SAQ

• 2013: Community Literacy Journal Special Issue for the special issue on “Writing Democracy"

  • Runners-up: Signs for “Women, Gender and Prisons" and Journal of Women’s History for “Human Rights, Global Conferences, and the Making of Postwar Transnational Feminisms”

• 2012: The Hedgehog Review for the special section on “Arab Spring”