Call for Papers
Deadline: Abstracts by September 15, full text by October 15, 2008
The Chicago Art Journal, the annual publication of the University of Chicago Department of Art History, is seeking submissions for its 2008-2009 edition. The Editors welcome the submission of original work by faculty and advanced graduate students reflecting recent research or lectures. This year's issue will examine Africa’s Temporalities.
The recent explosion of scholarship in the arts of Africa and its diasporas has owed much to geopolitical and cultural shifts effected by globalization. While this renewed interest has produced significant scholarship and fresh perspectives, much of the theorization and discourse surrounding Africa has been cast in the spatial dimensions of networks, international art markets, the transatlantic, the intracontinental, and cultural and artistic hybridity.
The CAJ seeks contributions that examine the temporal axis in the arts of Africa, as a complement to this spatial emphasis. In Western historiography, Africa has often been cast as an anachronistic space without 'self-conscious history' (Hegel), a de-temporalized Other, even as the continent may simultaneously function as a zone of chaos, instability, and rapid development, especially in the postcolonial period. Whilst Africa and its diasporas have produced some of the oldest and most durable works known to mankind, many of these practices have also transformed dramatically over time, whether in response to changing needs within a culture or as a result of external stimuli. Over centuries, the many arts of Africa have directly engaged (or provoked scholars' engagement with) such broad concepts as historicity, linear and non-linear procession of time, consciousness, and individual/cultural memory.
Potential topics include:
- modes in which works of art from Africa/African objects were and are viewed
- the effects of new media technologies and recent art practices on understandings of fluctuation and duration
- how objects come to be categorized as “ethnographic” or “Art,” and the potential fluidity in such groupings
- art that probes the past or investigates the future, memory, the concept of change, and representations of time
- Africa’s various “presents,” and their relationships with tradition, modernization, and decolonization
- museums’ and/or private individuals’ collecting practices and assignment of value and authenticity based on an object’s apparent age
Submissions:
- Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, and emailed as a Word document or PDF to the graduate student editors by September 15, 2008, if possible. Final manuscripts should be completed by October 15th, 2008, in Chicago Style, and should not exceed 3500 words.
- Visual Art -- No more than 20 images in the form of CDs, along with a resume and proposal for presentation within the space of 10-20 pages of the journal.
- Reviews of recent exhibitions, books, or articles, no more than 8 double-spaced pages, 12 point font.
All contributors should include their name, address, telephone number, and email address. Authors are responsible for securing reproduction rights and any associated fees. Contributors must follow The Chicago Manual of Style.
Please send submissions to the graduate student editors:
via email, for text-based contributions:
Ian Bourland and Ingrid Greenfield
for visual art contributions:
Chicago Art Journal, Department of Art History
The University of Chicago
5540 S. Greenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637