Steve Mintz, professor at the University of Texas, writing in Inside Higher Education: “Emerging fields represent a significant shift in the nature and purpose of academic disciplines by embracing more inclusive, critical, and justice-oriented approaches to research, teaching, and scholarship. These disciplines stress the importance of challenging normative structures and narratives, understanding the complexities of identity and oppression through an intersectional lens, and committing to social activism as an integral part of academic endeavors.” Read more here.