The essays that constitute this special issue both reflect critically on DEI and take steps toward elaborating a critical DEI within, around, and beyond the classroom. While they reflect a range of pedagogical investments, start from various disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations, and work through distinct historical and geographical situations, they are broadly united in understanding the social relationships of teaching and learning in an expansive way: that is, not simply as a relationship that is made for a semester or quarter at a time, but one that is forged through activism, artwork, language acquisition, administrative preparation, and more.