We are now accepting submissions for our regular issues. Manuscripts in MS Word (5,000–10,000 words) adhering to the MLA 9th edition formatting guidelines should be sent to editor@jcla.in.
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Call for Proposals for Special Issues
The Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics is accepting proposals for Guest-Edited Special Issues.
Individual or joint guest editors are invited to submit proposals in the form of a concept note for the proposed topic, which will be used as a call for submissions. The proposed topic is expected to be of current critical interest and should contribute significantly to comparative literature, aesthetics, philosophy, intellectual history, art history, criticism of the arts, or the history of ideas.
The special issue proposals should demonstrate a clear understanding of the current state of research in their respective fields and offer innovative and relevant ideas that appeal to a broad readership. Additionally, proposals should provide a clear and concise outline of the proposed special issue, including its scope, themes, and objectives.
We look forward to receiving your proposals and encourage you to submit them promptly at editor@jcla.in. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require any assistance or have any questions regarding the submission process.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Art, Imagination, and Affect
Guest Editors: Radu Bumbăcea (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany) and Julia Langkau (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Much of the philosophical literature on imagination and affective states has focused on our emotional reaction to imaginative engagement with fiction, in particular on two prominent puzzles, known as the ‘paradox of fiction’ and the ‘paradox of tragedy/horror’. While the first asks how we can (rationally) have emotions towards fictional events and characters, the second relates to our apparent enjoyment of negative emotions. Recent discussions have shifted (a) from propositional towards richer kinds of imaginative engagement and mental imagery, (b) from solving puzzles to analysing the peculiarities of affective states in our engagement (c) not only with fiction, but also with various different forms of art. This special issue is dedicated to pushing the debate forward with respect to these three recent developments and to understanding their interdependence. The aim is to take a close look at imagination and affect both in creating art and in its reception.
With respect to (a), we are interested in the creative role of imagination not only in the production of new artworks, but also in our engagement with such works. We would also like to explore the role that affective states and values certainly play in creative imagination. Another question is to what extent our engagement with works is constrained by norms and to what extend there is room for creative imaginative engagement. With respect to (b), one key issue is the role of affective states and imaginative immersion in the appreciation of art. While some authors think both are essential, others argue that the best appreciation is the detached intellectual understanding of minute aspects of the work. Further, we may wonder whether our affective engagement with art follows the same or different norms as affective states in real-life situations, and – again – to what extent the audience is constrained by norms or rather free in their engagement. Finally, with respect to (c), the question is whether fictionality plays a role in how we engage with a work of art. Some authors have recently argued that whether a work of art is considered fictional or not is a matter of genre and is not as significant as we might have thought. We would therefore like to address the general question of whether fictionality has some impact on how we should engage with and appreciate a work.
We encourage authors to submit their contributions addressing interrelations between art, imagination, and affect, with a focus on one of the following or related questions:
- What is creative imagining in the context of art?
- What is the role of affective states in creating art?
- What kind of imagination is involved in appreciating art?
- Do different norms apply to emotions towards fictional art and emotions towards real life?
- Are emotional reactions to art relevant? Is it important for a reader to actually experience an emotion, as opposed to imagining it or realising that the passage demands that emotion?
- Does the fact that after repeated engagement with a work we are less immersed in the fiction and our emotional reactions are much less strong pose a problem?
- Is emotional engagement with art part of engaging properly with it? If so, how does it relate to the artist’s intention
- What role does the distinction between emotions towards the content of a work and its form play?
- What is the connection between artistic means and the emotions we experience in our engagement with fiction?
- Does fictionality make a difference as to how we engage with a work?
Invited contributors: Eileen John (University of Warwick, UK) and Enrico Terrone (University of Genoa, Italy). Please send your submissions (and any questions regarding this special issue) to julialangkau@gmail.com and radu.bumbacea@gmail.com by 30 September 2025. Word limit: 8,000 words including footnotes, excluding references. Please also provide an abstract of about 250 words and keywords.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – The Sacred and Contemporary Artistic Languages: Interreligious and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Guest Editor: Luca Siniscalco (University of Bergamo / JLU Gießen)
We invite contributions for a special issue of JCLA dedicated to exploring the evolving relationship between the sacred and contemporary artistic expressions. This issue seeks to bring together scholars from religious studies, theology, philosophy, art history, and related disciplines to critically engage with how sacred traditions intersect with modern and postmodern artistic languages, with a particular focus on the visual arts.
In the context of modernity, religious artistic traditions have often undergone a crisis – triggered by processes of modernization, secularization, and demythologization. The historical bond between art and religion has been destabilized, as profane art increasingly came to coincide with the Western – and later global – “system of art” itself. These developments have challenged the capacity of traditional forms to convey religious meaning within a rapidly changing cultural landscape. Responses to this shift have varied: from a retreat into conservative aesthetics, often disconnected from contemporary sensibilities, to a disengagement from religious themes altogether. Yet, there have also been promising attempts to elaborate new artistic languages capable of bridging avant-garde artistic experimentation with religious imagination.
Moreover, recent cultural shifts associated with postmodernism and the so-called post-secular condition have reopened critical avenues for reimagining the relationship between the sacred and the arts. What happens when the pillars of modernity and secularization themselves enter into crisis and new challenges for traditional religions – such as the rise of new religious movements, the resurgence of esotericism, and alternative spiritualities – emerge on the horizon?
These transformations invite renewed reflection on the role of aesthetic experience in religious life and on the potential of contemporary artistic forms to express or mediate the sacred in ways that resonate with today’s cultural and spiritual landscape.
This issue aims to foster an interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue on questions such as:
• How have traditional religions and esoteric currents interacted with modernist and avant-garde art?
• How has the transition from modernity to postmodernity, and from secularization to post-secularism, influenced artistic languages?
• How do various religious traditions interpret and negotiate the relationship between the sacred and contemporary artistic forms?
• Can contemporary art recover or reinvent sacred expression in a post-secular age?
• What theological or philosophical frameworks can illuminate the potential of postmodern or post-secular aesthetics in religious contexts?
• How do artists and communities develop new symbolic languages that reflect both spiritual depth and contemporary relevance?
We welcome papers that address these questions from diverse perspectives and disciplines, including but not limited to:
• Religious Studies and Theology
• Art History and Visual Culture
• Philosophy of Religion
• Aesthetics
• Anthropology and Sociology of Religion
Submission Guidelines:
Please submit an abstract of approximately 300–500 words outlining your proposed paper, along with a short biographical note (150 words). Full papers will be requested from accepted proposals.
• Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 10 October 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: by 30 October 2025
• Deadline for Full Paper Submission: 30 January 2025
• Length: Full papers should be 5,000–10,000 words (including footnotes, excluding references)
• Formatting: Submissions must follow the MLA 9th edition formatting guidelines (as per JCLA submission standards)
Submissions and inquiries should be directed to: luca.siniscalco@unibg.it
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Aesthetics and Leisure: Historical, Intercultural, and Theoretical Perspectives
Guest Editors: Alberto Merzari (Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino, Italy) and Petros Satrazanis (University College Dublin, Ireland)
In his famous 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”, J.M. Keynes notoriously predicted that technological and economic advancements would dramatically reduce the need for labor. He envisioned a future where the greatest challenge would not be economic survival but the meaningful use of free time. As we move through the 21st century, his forecast has proven both prescient and problematic: automation and AI continue to reshape the workforce, and free time has indeed increased, albeit unequally, but the implications and potential of leisure for human life remain largely underexplored.
This special issue invites scholars to examine the relation between leisure and aesthetics, in historical, comparative and theoretical terms. Contributions shall try to determine how aesthetics is related to leisure, and/or how this relationship looks like in different traditions. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which the experience of leisure has changed in modern times, and how this transformation has influenced our aesthetic practices. Additionally, this issue seeks to explore whether and under what conditions, the increasing availability of free time in a post-work society could provide new and/or better opportunities for cultivating aesthetic thinking and the aesthetic dimensions of life.
We welcome submissions that engage with the topic in one or more of the following directions:
1. The aesthetic conceptualization of leisure
The concept of “leisure” is both obvious and elusive, as it calls into question complex and historically multifaceted notions such as those of time, freedom, pleasure, experience, and work.
• How can the experience of leisure be conceptualized from an aesthetic perspective?
• Is leisure itself an object of aesthetic enjoyment, a form of aesthetic experience, or the very condition of possibility for aesthetic experiencing? Is aesthetic experience intrinsically a leisurely kind of experience?
• What kind of freedom is at stake in the experience of leisure? Can e.g. the theories of play (e.g., Schiller, Huizinga, Gadamer) contribute to its understanding?
• How can leisure and the related experiences of entertainment and recreation be differentiated?
2. Aesthetics and leisure in a global perspective
Different cultures, both in a historical and geographical sense, have defined differently the ways of enjoying free time or engaging in aesthetic experiences within it.
• What alternative experiences of leisure exist across different cultural traditions or historical periods?
• How has leisure been linked to artistic enjoyment, creativity, and inspiration in other times or cultures?
• Which different aesthetics underly e.g., the Greek scholè, the Roman otium, the Arabic lahū or ‘uṭla and the Japanese yoka?
Contributions that approach leisure from global, non-Western, and postcolonial perspectives will be particularly welcome.
3. Aesthetics and leisure today
The experience of leisure has been undergoing profound transformations in modern times, which have crucially modified its relationship with aesthetic experience. On the one hand, the activities that occupy our leisure time seem to have an increasingly exclusively aesthetic character; on the other, the growing incorporation of certain artistic practices into market dynamics, and even more the overcoming of an aesthetic prejudice against what is “functional”, seem to make the boundary between aesthetics and work more permeable than in the past.
• Do aesthetics and/or aesthetic experiences still have a structural link with leisure?
• Has leisure lost part of its social, political, and experimental significance and undergone a process of “comfortabilization”? And if yes, what implication does this have for aesthetics?
• Are digital and virtual environments reshaping our experience of leisure?
• Does contemporary leisure encourage genuine aesthetic engagement and artistic creativity?
Special attention will be devoted to contributions that address the issue with non-traditional approaches or drawing from artistic experiences.
4. Aesthetics in a post-work society
The implementation of new technologies promises—at least potentially—a future where work may no longer hold a central or predominant role in an individual’s life.
• How is the marginalization of work going to reshape our relationship with leisure and aesthetic enjoyment?
• What potentially negative implications might it have?
• How could the role and function of art change?
Ultimately, we seek to understand what benefits or challenges the aesthetic dimension might encounter in a post-work society.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts (300-500 words) is 30 June 2025. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 July 2025. Full papers (5,000-10,000 words) will be due by 31 December 2025. Please follow the MLA 9th edition formatting guidelines and submit to all of these addresses: alberto.merzari@accademiadiurbino.it, petros.satrazanis2@ucdconnect.ie, and editor@jcla.in. The submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – A Festschrift for Peter Lamarque
Guest Editor: Washington Morales-Maciel (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
In felicitation of Peter Lamarque’s oeuvre, we are bringing out a special issue titled “A Festschrift for Peter Lamarque”. This edition aims to celebrate his distinguished academic career, characterized by a commitment to the highest standards of clarity, intellectual depth, and rigorous thought. His internationally acclaimed work has significantly shaped diverse fields within the arts, challenging traditional debates in aesthetics and pioneering new directions within the discipline.
The journal itself has had the privilege of serving as both a platform for his original contributions and as a witness to his influence, with him also serving as an honorary member of the editorial board. In recognizing the breadth of his scholarship and the generosity of his intellectual spirit, the journal aims to pay tribute to a body of work that has, from its inception, treated literature as a vital subject within philosophical aesthetics.
Lamarque’s approach challenges the narrow subordination of literary theory to the semantics and pragmatics of fiction, while also resisting the dissolution of boundaries between continental literary criticism and the social sciences. His enduring contributions to the discipline’s distinct identity, his defence of its autonomy, and his forward-looking research initiatives collectively form a philosophical legacy that this special issue seeks to honour.
We invite original research articles in 5,000-10,000 words (MLA style) addressing, among others, but not exclusively, the following topics and problems:
I. Metacriticism – Aesthetic Interpretation of Literature
i. What are or should be the aims of literary interpretation?
ii. What is the nature of the principles of literary rationality?
iii. What are the specific contributions of the logical-philosophical investigation of fiction to the aesthetic understanding of literature?
iv. What are the theoretical strengths and weaknesses of thought theory for the solution of the paradox of fiction?
v. What are the boundaries between literary, philosophical, psychological and psychoanalytical interpretations?
II. Ontology of Literature
i. What are the objects suitable for literary interpretation?
ii. What is the nature of the aesthetic properties of literature?
iii. What are the conditions of identity and subsistence of works of art, particularly literary works?
iv. Is the construction of characters analogous to the construction of personal identities or the construction of persons?
III. Epistemic Assumptions of Metacriticism
i. What notions of knowledge are presupposed in the contemporary philosophy of literature?
ii. Are recent humanist philosophical programs consistent with conventionalist aesthetics, or can they find foundations in it?
IV. Ethics and Literature
i. Is the aesthetic value of literature ultimately an ethical value?
ii. Is the value of a literary work a function of its ethical content, whether positive or negative?
V. Methodologies of Speculative Aesthetics
i. What are the strengths and legitimacy of transcendental-analytic analyses in conventionalist aesthetics?
ii. Are there substantial differences between sociological and transcendental-analytic analyses of literature?
iii. What are the limits and scope of empirical aesthetics compared to those of speculative aesthetics?
iv. Is a conventionalist elucidation of literary creation, archaic art, and even art outside the boundaries of the Western canon possible?
Submission deadline: 31 March 2025
Email: washington.morales@fhce.edu.uy, editor@jcla.in
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SPECIAL ISSUE – (De)Bordering Aesthetics: 19th-Century German Philosophy and the Migratory Turn
Guest Editor: Gabriele Schimmenti (Roma Tre University, Italy)
Philosophical studies on borders and migration have expanded in recent decades due to (among other things) the international historical challenge represented by the migration processes generated and multiplicated by phenomena such as globalization and climate crisis. In recent years, several scholars in political philosophy and critical political science have advanced the need to rethink categories such as space, territories or borders, as well as the necessity to reconsider political subjectivities from the vantage point of mobility. A migratory turn has also occurred in aesthetics, philosophy of art and art history (Dogramaci 2019). New emergent approaches such as Border Aesthetics (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017; Schimanski 2019) and Migrant Aesthetics (Carpio 2023) emphasize both the crucial role of migration for aesthetic production, and the relevance of aesthetics with regard to the narrative construction/description of borders, borderscapes, migration and the subjectivities involved.
The aim of this special issue is to investigate the relationships between aesthetics, borders and migration in German Philosophy, in particular in 19th-century aesthetics. In fact, 19th-century German aesthetics and, more generally, philosophy represent not only a moment in which an explicit reflection between potentially different concepts of borders is developed — and this can be read as a great attempt of both bordering and debordering — but also a laboratory for rethinking borders from a territorial, (inter)national, economic and cultural perspective, and to consider the phenomenon of global migration in relation to humans and non-humans, including artistic objects.
Last date of submission: 31 January 2025.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Philosophy of Artistic Inspiration
Guest Editor: Giulia Cervato (University of Padua, Italy)
We invite submissions for a forthcoming number of the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics exploring the philosophical dimensions of artistic inspiration. This number aims to investigate how inspiration functions within various artistic practices and traditions, considering its implications for creativity, expression, and the nature of art itself.
Artistic inspiration has intrigued thinkers since antiquity, often viewed as a mystical or divine force driving artists in their creative process. Within contemporary philosophical discourse, it acquired a fundamental relevance, raising critical questions about agency, intentionality, and the relationship between the artist and their work. How do philosophical theories—from Plato’s notion of enthusiasm to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow—inform our understanding of inspiration? In what ways can inspiration be considered an internal psychological state, an external influence, or a social construct?
We welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
* The relationship between philosophy and inspiration: What is the relationship between philosophy and inspiration? To what extent has philosophy and its pursuit of rationalism positioned itself in opposition to the phenomena of inspiration and poetic dispossession? Or, conversely, have there been any fruitful attempts to harmonize philosophy with enthusiastic experiences?
* The relationship between inspiration and technē: Does inspiration transcend technical skill, or are they intrinsically linked? Is technique a barrier to inspiration, or can it coexist harmoniously with it?
* Historical perspectives on inspiration: How have notions of artistic inspiration evolved from antiquity to contemporary thematicizations? What topoi, images, clichés, and metaphors have been developed to describe the experience of inspiration throughout the history of philosophy, art, and literature, and what consequences do they carry?
* Religious implications of inspiration: What is the relationship between inspiration and religious phenomena, such as prophecy? How have different cultures understood the divine origins of inspiration, and how does this affect artistic expression?
* The ethics of inspiration: Is there only a solitary and solipsistic dimension to inspiration, or can it also be conceived as a collective phenomenon? Can inspiration be commodified, and what implications does this have for originality and authenticity in art?
We encourage papers with an intercultural outlook, examining, e.g., how Western tropes have influenced the thematicization of inspiration in non-Western contexts, as well as comparative analyses between Western and non-Western models. Interdisciplinary approaches and submissions from scholars in philosophy, art, art history, literature, and related fields are particularly welcomed.
Abstract submission by 31 March 2025 (150-250 words, send to both giulia.cervato@studenti.unipd.it and editor@jcla.in)
Full paper submission by 31 October 2025 (Manuscripts in 5,000–10,000 words adhering to the MLA 9th edition)
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SPECIAL ISSUE – A Study of Aesthetics in Art and Representation
Contemporary studies in art in juxtaposition with the politics of representation lack a cogent evaluation of the limitations of the persisting need for epistemic validation for ontological existence. The relationship between art and its contribution toward the endorsement of ontological beliefs is a complex entity that constructs and reconstructs material conceptions of literary history. Such gaps in literary criticism necessitate a theoretical analysis of the aesthetic experience in art and reality, and the scope of aesthetics in its (re)presentation of the reality of art.
This issue is an effort to commemorate the contributions of Prof. Ananta Charan Sukla (1942 – 2020) toward the realm of literary criticism. His chief works in literary theory engage with a tendentious rereading of the concept of aesthetics for the promotion of novel ideas in the field. To understand and develop his literary output, scholars need to question the positionality of the ‘third-world’ subject in Western discourses to enable the creation of mechanisms of departure from mainstream criticism for the development of an alternate mode of enquiry that concerns itself with the establishment of the subaltern as the Subject. Within this postcolonial framework, we need to examine contemporary theories of literary representation, and study the essence of art and its reality.
Other potential thematic constructs for academic discourse include reconsideration of literary theory and representation in comparative literature. Prof. Sukla has extensively worked on distinct modes of representation and re-presentation in fiction. Scholars are, therefore, welcome to integrate the diversity of his research interests to explore the fundamentals of fictionality in literary tradition, particularly its relationship with epistemology and subjectivity. Discourse on fictionality is supremely pertinent to understand Prof. Sukla’s examination of the conceptuality of fiction and its contribution, if any, to the paradigmatic status of the actual world.
To make the issue an academic ode to a remarkable critic, we invite scholarly papers that engage with the potentialities of representation in contemporary criticism and explore the aesthetics of art. We also welcome papers that introduce the anxieties and enquiries of contemporary criticism in their engagement with literary aesthetics. The objective is to continue discussions inaugurated by Prof. Sukla in academia.
Possible topics of discussion include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Mimesis in Greek and Indian Aesthetics
- Indian Aesthetics in Dramaturgy and Poetics
- The Indian ‘Subject’ in Western Aesthetics
- Art, Essence, and Experience in Contemporary Aesthetics
- Examination of Representation and Deconstruction in Literary Theory
- Theorisation of Impersonal Art
- Potentiality of Art in the Indian Milieu
- Transcultural Possibilities of Classical Indian Aesthetics
- Strategies of Deconstruction in Comparative Literature
- Language, Discourses, and Aesthetics
- Ontology and its Representation in Literature
- Environmental Aesthetics in Indian and Western Philosophy