As Section Editor of Open Cultural Studies, I wish to bring the following to your attention:

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR SPECIAL ISSUES

OPEN CULTURAL STUDIES vol. 2025


Open Cultural Studies (www.degruyter.com/culture)
 – an open access journal published by De Gruyter – invites groups of researchers, conference organizers and individual scholars to submit their proposals of edited volumes, to be considered for publication as special/topical issues of the journal.

Proposals will be collected by October 15, 2024

Proposals will be collected by Dr Katarzyna Tempczyk (katarzyna.tempczyk@degruyter.com)

Potential proposals for topical issues may refer to a broad range of subjects, including:
* History & memory,
* Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian & other cultures,
* Popular culture,
* Youth cultures & subcultures,
* Visual culture,
* Photography & film,
* Ethnic & traditional cultures,
* Comparative Literature,
* Media & communication,
* Architecture & urban studies,
* Multiculturalism, inter- & trans-culturalism,
* Gender, lesbian, gay & queer studies,
* Music & dance,
* Theatre & performance,
* Culture & education,
* Regional cultural studies,
* Political economy,
* Area studies,
* Cultural policy,
* Sports.

OUR PREVIOUS TOPICAL ISSUES INCLUDED:
* Russian Speakers After Migration
* Plague as Metaphor
* Redefining New Black Feminist Thought
* Writing the Image, Showing the Word: Agency and Knowledge in Texts and Images
* Taiwanese Identity
* Gender Fluidity in Early-Modern to Post-Modern Children’s Literature and Culture
* Alberto Blest Gana at 100
* Women’s Spring: Feminism, Nationalism and Civil Disobedience
* Media Practices Commoning
* Of Sacred Crossroads-Cultural Studies and the Sacred
* MatteRealities: Historical Trajectories and Conceptual Futures for Material Culture Studies
* Contemporary African and Black Diasporic Spaces in Europe
* J. G. Ballard and Making
* Marx, Semiotics and Political Praxis
* Capitalist Aesthetics
* Images of the Future: Science Fiction across the Media
* Motion and Emotion: Cultural Literacy on the Move
* Black Womanhood in Popular Culture
* Musical Improvisation: Approaches, Practices, Reception and Pedagogy
* New Nationalisms in European and Postcolonial Discourses
* Media and Emotions
* Transmediating Culture(s)?
* On Uses of Black Camp
* Victorians Like Us—Domesticity and Worldliness
* Multicultural Cervantes
* Migration and Translation

IN PROGRESS:
* Safe Places
* Critical Green Theories and Botanical Imaginaries: Exploring Human and More-than-human World Entanglements
* Cultures of Airborne Diseases

Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OpenCulturalStudies

This peer-reviewed essay was invited as part of a special issue of Arts, A Ten-Year Journey of Arts, edited by Prof. Michelle Facos, Department of Art History, Indiana University.

This is the first essay-length study of this monumental Spanish painting in English, which memorializes the execution of the liberal General José María de Torrijos and his Companions on the beaches at Málaga in 1831, after a failed attempt to stir a revolution to topple the despotic Ferdinand VII. The painting is considered to be the greatest work by Antonio Gisbert Pérez, an artist who has received renewed attention since the painting’s permanent reinstallation in the Prado, Madrid, in 2007. A pivotal example of the Spanish visual culture of war, and remarkable for its innovative composition and sensitive portrayal of Torrijos and his men, the painting also depicts the Byronic, Northern Irish-born Robert Boyd, active in the final years (1830–1831) of the Greek War of Independence and who was inspired by Torrijos’ cause. This essay introduces new material that builds on existing Spanish-led research, offering a detailed analysis of the painting’s content and composition within its historical context. Read the essay on the Arts website.

It was a pleasure to take part in this wonderfully insightful event to launch this great volume, edited by Prof. Sally Charnow at Hofstra University, New York.

This short peer-reviewed article looks at this extreme right-wing art group’s actions against Otto Dix from 1927. The term ‘Degenerate Art’ is well known, especially with regard to the infamous exhibition that took place in Munich in 1937. However, one of the earliest Degenerate Art shows took place place in Dresden in September 1933. Dresden had a number of volkisch art groups, active from the early Weimar years, which were affiliated with the NSDAP and which targeted art that they considered ‘un-German’. The German Art Society was well connected to NSDAP from the early 1920s and was instrumental in the assured destruction of Dix’s career once the NSDAP took power in January 1933. The article can be read here.

I’m delighted to see my Adobe InDesign skills in print! This lovely booklet about those commemorated on the World War I memorial at St Peter’s, North Main St., Cork, written by Cork war historian Gerry White, sponsored by Cork City Council and designed and laid out by yours truly, is now on sale at St Peter’s. The memorial is undergoing restoration and will be unveiled in the near future.

It was a pleasure to give a talk, via Zoom, on Romanesque art and architecture to the group at Orthodox Tours, led by Fr. Gotlinsky, Rector/Tour Leader, at the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church, Binghampton, New York. The talk focused especially on the art and architecture of pilgrimage, found on or close to the Way of St James (Camino de Santiago de Compostela), from central France to Santiago de Compostela. Fr Gotlinsky leads cultural tours across Europe and Russia, taking in sacred sites from early Christianity onward.