Vol. 48, No. 1, Spring 2025 (Regular Issue)
We are now accepting submissions for our forthcoming regular issue, Vol. 48, No. 1, Spring 2025. Manuscripts in MS Word (5,000–10,000 words) adhering to the MLA 9th edition formatting guidelines should be sent to editor@jcla.in by 31 December 2024.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Art and Imagination: Philosophical Issues
Though some have dismissed the imagination as “the junkyard of the mind,” just about all artists will vouch for the fact that the imagination is not just essential but also central to the arts. This is true not only of the creation or production of artworks, it is the case also when it comes to the reception or experience of art.
The imagination is a topic in the philosophies of mind and psychology, in addition to other fields. Researchers who work in these areas have spent a lot of time investigating such issues as consciousness and intentionality (very roughly, the object-directedness or aboutness of mental states). But while these two topics are undoubtedly central to their fields, those who work in the philosophies of mind and psychology would do well to broaden their horizons and also explore other topics such as the nature of the imagination. Also relevant here would be empirical data from studies in neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and so on.
Besides many others, here is a brief, non-exhaustive list of broadly at least two sorts of philosophical issues pertaining to art and imagination.
One kind of topics cuts across all the arts. What is the nature of the creative imagination or creativity? Is the imagination involved in our experience of art? If so, how? What about mental imagery? How does the artist’s imagination (or pratibha, in Indian aesthetics) bear on the evaluation of an artwork? And does it also affect the value of art?
The other set of issues is specific to at least some of the arts. Is the imagination involved in the viewer’s experience of pictures, and if so, how? What about the other visual arts such as sculpture, photography, and film? And what are we to say of the role of imagination in the case of fiction when many of us claim to feel empathy or sympathy for or identification with fictional characters we know are not real but only make-believe? Is the imagination involved more generally in experiencing fiction, and if so, how? What about our experience of the other arts such as music, dance, and architecture, for example? For that matter, how about newer art forms such as video games?
Last date of submission: 31 March 2025.
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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 – Translation & Philosophy: Disciplines in Need of Dialogue
Guest Editor: Byron Taylor (University College London)
This special volume asks scholars to wonder how, why, to what extent and in what ways ‘the Philosophy of Language’ has supposedly dominated academic Philosophy for so long now, while having almost nothing to say about translation. As such, it invites scholars to consider ways in which the engagement of translation and philosophy can be reappraised and re-examined across a variety of global contexts. This is an oversight long overdue addressing. It will aim to open new dialogue and set forth a new discursive space, with rich possibilities of re-invention and diversification for both disciplines in their mutual engagement. As such, we hope to receive contributions from either discipline, or from scholars with an interest in these issues, the engagement (or lack thereof) between these disciplines.
Analytic philosophy has, at least since the days of the Vienna Circle, opted for a style of writing that is deliberately clear, uncharacteristic and transparency. Yet however confidently it has pursued these ends, it now reaches a moment of stagnant crisis with no clear direction. We are especially interested in contributors who examine how translation and philosophy operate in conjunction, comparison or dialogue with debates of World Literature and untranslatability. For a discipline in a state of self-confessed dysfunction as Analytic Philosophy is, does the introduction or inclusion of translation into philosophy represent a chance for renewal? Should philosophers read more about translation, or should translation scholars read more philosophy? Themes include (but are not restricted to):
1. Translation and Analytic Philosophy;
2. Translation and Continental Philosophy;
3. Translators and philosophers;
4. The language used by philosophers;
5. The history and reception of ideas;
6. Global contexts that challenge Global English;
7. Comparative literature and philosophy.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Gnosis and Esotericism in Speculative Fiction
Guest Editors: Michael Barros and George J. Sieg
Due in no small part to television adaptations of Sandman and The Man in the High Castle, as well as movie remakes like Dune, there is a surge of interest in both speculative fiction and themes of hidden, often transcendental knowledge. This issue will examine the presence and impact of esotericism and gnosis in speculative fiction, considering how they are expressed and their role in shaping narrative, character development, and thematic depth. Of particular interest are works by authors such as Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Neil Gaiman.
Themes and Objectives
- Explore the aesthetic aspects of esoteric themes in literature.
- Discuss what gnosis means for modern stories.
- Study the link between hidden knowledge and speculative fiction.
- Examine how historic gnosis/Gnosticism is expressed in speculative fiction.
- Understand how these themes affect stories and characters.
- Analyze the techniques employed by authors to express esoteric/gnostic ideas.
- Promote discussions between literature, philosophy, and religious studies.
- Highlight examples of speculative fiction that deal with esoteric/gnostic thought and assess their impact.
Possible Topics
- How is the “Gnostic Trilogy” of Philip K. Dick unique in its expression of Gnosticism?
- Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin’s use of esoteric themes in her Earthsea series.
- The role of gnosis in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Sandman series.
- The presence of esoteric symbolism in the work of William Blake.
- Examining the influence of historic Gnostic Christianity on contemporary speculative fiction.
- Representations of mystical knowledge in sci-fi.
- The aesthetics of esotericism in dystopian literature.
- Religion vs. mysticism in speculative fiction.
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SPECIAL ISSUE – On Spirituality and Being
Guest Editor: Ikea M. Johnson (Salve Regina University, USA)
This collection will examine spirituality in 20th and 21st century literature. Contributors may consider the intersectionality of spirituality like Afro-Asiatic thought in, for example, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Charles R. Johnson’s Middle Passage, Rivers Solomon’s The Deep, Toni Morrison’s Love, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
The goal of this collection is to move beyond ocular (in)visibility and gain a deeper understanding of concepts related to spirituality as, for example, refracted through the prism of Afro-Asiatic thought. This theme also explores the understudied spiritual and mystical aspects of stories related to Kemetic philosophy and cosmology, chaos theory, fragmentation, and formlessness to demonstrate the potential benefits of (re)fragmenting the mind to adopt a more universal worldview.
How does spirituality provide authors with ways of transcending and deconstructing categories of race, gender, and sexuality? How do critics work with partiality and delve into the essence and the materiality of thought? On the other hand, how do some authors explain the changing aspects of folks’ three-dimensional view discovered through real and imagined spaces as (im)material? These traversing facets that interweave among one another create the underpinning for specifying the term (im)material. While thinking alongside other scholars, contributors may also investigate the (im)material conditions of each author’s works.
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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
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Chief Currents in Chinese Art History and Aesthetics: Contemporary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Art and Emotion: Philosophical Engagements with Painting
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SPECIAL ISSUE – Understanding and Enjoyment in Aesthetic Experience