Special Issues

For information on how to submit a Special Issue Proposal, please see the Information for Authors.

Feminist Domesticities

Edited by: Jo Applin & Francesca Berry

Feminist Domesticities presents and consolidates a growing corpus of art historical feminist scholarship on the domestic in relation to modernist, postmodernist, and contemporary practice. Contributors share a common interest in the artistic and scholarly problems and opportunities that arise when the feminist politics of artistic agency are positioned in critical and productive relation to the feminist politics of domesticity. The sexual politics of domestic, artistic, and scholarly labour, productive agency and the obedient or disobedient domestic imaginary are the concern of some articles. But the special issue also offers contributions framed by alternative or more recent modes of feminist enquiry, including those forwarding or critiquing a feminist politics of care, and those constituted through the framework of artistic practice itself.

Feminist Domesticities. Order a copy of this Special Issue and select issue 40/1.

Modernism After Paul Strand

Modernism After Paul Strand. Order a copy of this Special Issue and select issue 38/1.

Theorizing Wax: On the Meaning of a Disappearing Medium

Edited by: Allison Goudie & Hanneke Grootenboer

The history of wax has been a history of disappearance, partly due to the perishable quality of the material. In this Special Issue, we intend to rescue the stories of the (few) surviving artifacts as well as demonstrate their continuing impact on our understanding of object hood. One way to do justice to wax’s potholed past is to look as much at the physical objects that have disappeared from view as at the metaphors they have left behind. As the contributions in this issue show, wax has proven to be fascinating and rich medium for artists who were able to create hyper-realistic figures, as well as a surprisingly flexible metaphor whose tenacity and longevity contrasts sharply with the substance’s proneness to deterioration.

Theorizing Wax: On the Meaning of a Disappearing Medium. Order a copy of this Special Issue and select issue 36/1.

Early Modern Horror

Edited by: Maria H. Loh

So, why study horror? Why examine a genre that aims to repulse and terrify? Why consider the response of spectators who are either disgusted and traumatised or (even worse) amused and entertained? Moreover, why Early Modern Horror? Horror shakes us to the core and reminds us not only of our own mortality, but also of the vulnerability of our coping strategies (whether they be articulated through the discourse of religion, medicine, science, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, phenomenology, etc.).

Early Modern Horror. Order a copy of this Special Issue and select issue 34/3

Mal'occhio: Looking Awry at the Renaissance

This special issue, co-edited with Maria Loh, originated in an Oxford Art Journal conference Mal'occhio: Looking Awry at the Renaissance, held in November 2008, organised under the auspices of the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum with generous support from University College London and Oxford University Press. Ugo da Carpi's print of Diogenes from the British Museum was used as the poster for the conference and as an emblem for its aims. Who better than that great debunker of social norms, Diogenes the Cynic, to stand for questioning the ‘civilisation of the Renaissance’?

Mal'occhio: Looking Awry at the Renaissance. Order a copy of this Special Issue and select issue 32/3.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall’s work has long been of great interest to art historians. Jeff Wall’s work is currently being reconsidered after extremely prominent retrospectives at the Schaulager and Tate Modern (2005), and prior to another retrospective at MoMA (2007) which will tour to Chicago and San Francisco. This Special Issue grew out of a conference that took place at Tate Modern during the retrospective there. Six art historians gave papers, each looking at one particular work by Wall. Revised versions of five of these papers are presented in the Special Issue alongside new essays by scholars working on photography and 20th century art history.

A range of voices can be heard in this Special Issue, some quite skeptical about Wall’s practice, and some exploring it in brand new ways. Wall is considered in relation to Marcel Duchamp, in relation to night photography, to George Stubbs, as well as to more obvious figures such as Victor Burgin. The issue also contains a brand new, previously unpublished interview between John Roberts and Jeff Wall.

Jeff Wall. Order a copy of this Special Issue and select issue 30/1.