(CLOSED) Call for Papers: Special Issue on Death

Death studies have been a discipline since the 1970s. Currently, death is a topical issue not least due to the war in Europe. Also, Covid-19 made the idea of death a little less remote in peoples' ordinary life. But death does not concern only humans. The ongoing extinction prompts us to ponder if there are deaths we dismiss as not worth enough of our attention.

Death is an aesthetic, ethical, and ecological issue. Graveyards might be historically meaningful places as in Ulla Taipale's environmental installation The Other Side in Barcelona 2018, but they take up space, and decomposing of bodies needs ecological solutions. Recently, interest in the materiality of death has increased, and many artists have dealt with death and dying. Photographs of Perttu Saksa, bioart works of Svenja Kratz, bronze sculptures of dead animals by Anne Koskinen, decomposed corpses on brass by Toni R. Toivonen, and Terike Haapoja's Community (2007) serve as examples. From an artistic point of view, the binary of life and death might not be self-evident, but a threshold between life and death can be seen as a matter of varied discourses.

Nevertheless, there are aims to abolish death through technoscientific means. In his book, Karhun nimi [The Name of The Bear] (2006), philosopher Tere Vadén criticises natural sciences for promoting survivalism by developing new medicines and technologies to endure and enhance life. However, biological organisms strive at least as much toward death as toward survival. Deterioration and death are natural parts of life.

There has been a need to reconceptualise death. Queer Death Studies (QDS) is an emerging transdisciplinary field of research “that critically, (self-)reflexively and affirmatively investigates and challenges the conventional normativities, assumptions, expectations and regimes of truths that are brought to life and made evident by death, dying and mourning,” as Marietta Radomska, Tara Mehrabi, and Nina Lykke write in Queer Death Studies: Death, Dying and Mourning from a Queerfeminist Perspective (2020). QDS focuses on necropolitics and asks, who are ignored in dominant stories of death, loss, grief, and mourning?

We invite articles, visual essays, and commentary papers dealing with artistic research, art practice, or theoretical and critical viewpoints on contemporary art of death, dying, and mourning.

 

Call for abstracts

Please submit a max. 150-word (not including references) abstract by November 9^th, 2022,through Research in Arts and Education's online platform: https://journal.fi/rae/about/submissions. Please note that you must register to the platform to submit your abstract. Make sure you use the submission section “Abstracts” when submitting the file. In “Comments to the editor,” write “CFP Death” and the manuscript format listed below (Practice-based/visual essay; Research-based article; Commentary paper).

The authors will be notified of the status of their abstract by November 15^th, 2022, and are expected to send their full manuscripts by January 16^th, 2023.

Research in Arts and Education grants open access to all publications and is ranked in the Publication Forumof The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies.

There are three recommended manuscript formats for Research in Arts and Education:

• Practice-based / visual essay that studies the topic through artistic means. Artistic content must be accompanied by a written component in which the author describes, analyses, and/or reflects their artistic practice. The recommended length for this format is 3,000 words, including references.
• Research-based article that studies the topic through academic means. The recommended length for this format is 6,000 words, including references.
• Commentary paper that partakes in a topical discussion on art and/or research. The recommended length for this format is 3,000 words, including references.

Each format can include visual material as well as multimedia content (e.g., performative content, video, internet, or sound work, etc.). Since Research in Arts and Education is published in PDF format, multimedia content must be included as external links. Authors are responsible for hosting all external content as well as ensuring its accessibility, as Research in Arts and Education does not currently provide online hosting services.

Please email Eva Tordera Nuño (eva.torderanuno@aalto.fi) if you have any questions about submission procedures. This special issue is guest edited by Helena Sederholm (helena.sederholm@aalto.fi).

 

Key dates for authors

Deadline for abstracts: November 9^th, 2022

Notification for abstract submissions: November 15^th, 2022

Deadline for full contributions: January 16^th, 2023

Reviewers' deadline (1. round): February 15^th, 2023

Revised manuscript due date: March 19^th, 2023

Reviewers' deadline (2. round): April 9^th, 2023

Final manuscripts due date: May 5^th, 2023

Publishing in June 2023

Submission procedure

Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers following the instructions provided on the RAE website: https://journal.fi/rae/about/submissions. The submitted manuscripts should not have been previously published, nor should they be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.