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Submit Work to Other Voices!
Current Call for Papers
General Guidelines
Notes for Contributors
Guidelines for Peer Reviewers
Other Voices publishes critical essays in the humanities (emphasizing interdisciplinary studies), extracts from works in progress, hypertext/multimedia projects, translations of previously unavailable work, interviews/transcribed lectures, and reviews. Submissions are welcome from any quarter. We particularly encourage faculty, graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Pennsylvania to submit work to us.
All submissions are subject to strict lateral peer-review, that is, work is reviewed by a peer or peers of equal stature or above (e.g., the work of a graduate student author would be reviewed by another graduate student, independent scholar or faculty member).
General submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Submissions to special issues are due by the date specified in the call below.
Other Voices is currently indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL), and stored in the new LOCKSS archive of electronic humanities publications. Other Voices is consistently well placed in both Internet search engines and online directories.
All submissions should be sent to the following address:
E-mail: submissions AT othervoices.org
--or--
Snail Mail:
Other Voices
Attn: Vance Bell
P.O. Box 31907
Philadelphia, PA 19104-1907
USA
Current Call for Papers
CFP: Aesthetic Violence (submissions due 6/15/07)
How does art respond to the tremendous pace of the world’s violence? More than merely sublimating or ameliorating trauma, art documents the physical and psychological damage wreaked by social, political, cultural or personal violence. Damaged life yields a damaged art, the distortions of which are crucial in capturing the specific ramifications of violence. Art in the face of war must suffer this distortion; consider the writings of Levi, Antelme, Celan, Beckett, and O’Brien, among many others. The documentary of aesthetic violence runs through work as various as art on feminism, racism, and ranges from group to personal violence.
Yet there also has been a subgroup of artists that integrate aspects of violence into their own oeuvre, sometimes to unearth or expose its taboo and other times to dissipate it or to direct it to various ends. In this trend consider Pound, Bataille, Artaud, Jünger, Celine, Gide, Genet through to Viennese Actionism, performance artist Bob Flanagan, writer Kathy Acker, punk and heavy metal music, and violent cinema. Critics have generally placed the former group of writers as ethical exemplars while the latter are known for crossing or destroying ethical boundaries. But what is the assumed status of the ethical exemplar, and does it leave the condition of aesthetic violence still uncritically suspended despite its evocation?
Other Voices, an online journal of cultural criticism, seeks essays that address the invocation of aesthetic violence of the past century. Some overall questions we wish to address include: How does aesthetic violence relate to ethics? How is aesthetic violence experienced? At what point does violence inhibit any aesthetic experience? How might aesthetic violence relate to a confrontation with political violence? How does aesthetic violence operate as a critique of violence?
We are also interested specifically in contributions that articulate a sense of the effect of violent assault upon the art object or viewer/reader. Too often critical discourses on violence adopt a moralizing tone, dismissing violence without close examination of its specific physical, psychological and aesthetic effects. More detailed inquiry may allow us to ask, for instance, on what possible grounds could one establish a phenomenology of aesthetic violence? What would be its terms and conditions, its ethical position? To what degree is violence inherent in our categories of knowledge, aesthetic techniques or modes of representation?
Some general topics might include:
- war aesthetics
- art and racist violence
- art and feminism
- art and rituals involving violence
- art and violence of political resistance
- music and violence
- the beautiful and the ugly
- ethics of violent art from the position of the artist or the viewer
- violence and technique: as a way of directing, focusing, or de-focusing attention on specific forms or instances of historic or personal violence
- violence and pleasure in art
- philosophies of modernity and violence (Nietzsche, Sorel, Benjamin, Adorno, Lenin, Marxism, Mao, Colonialism, Fanon, Situationism, Black liberation movements, third world/global struggles)
We invite papers from all theoretical perspective and disciplines, including, but not limited to: theoretical and philosophical essays, comparative case studies, historical and cultural interpretations, and psychological and psychoanalytical investigations.
We are interested in articles (4000-9000 words), intellectual commentaries (3000-5000 words), review essays (2000-4000 words) and scholarly book reviews (1500-2500 words). Non-traditional submissions, such as lecture transcriptions, hypermedia projects, translations, art work, interviews and other materials, will also be considered.
Please send completed submissions by email attachment to submissions AT othervoices.org no later than June 15, 2007.
About the Journal:
Other Voices is an electronic journal of cultural criticism published at the University of Pennsylvania. Founded in March 1997, Other Voices regularly publishes provocative essays, interviews, lecture transcriptions, hypermedia projects, translations and reviews in the arts and humanities; covering philosophy, literature, visual art, music, and
theory in a variety of traditional and non-traditional forms. Other Voices is dedicated to expanding the dialogues that take place between the disciplines, and which challenge received notions about reading and scholarship in the university and at large. In keeping with this the journal is home to a broad-based group of contributors including academics, independent scholars, graduate and undergraduate students. We are particularly interested in work that revitalizes the discussion
within cultural studies, and which brings novel methods, theories, and ideas into relationship with current debates.
General Guidelines
Ideal essays for this publication should attempt to cross disciplinary boundaries, thereby bringing previously unrelated elements into new configurations.
Submissions should be well-argued, clearly presented, and supported by verifiable references when appropriate; however, authors should not feel bound to the formal essay format if their ideas can best be expressed otherwise. Individuals should be aware of both the constraints and extended possibilities offered by internet publication. If you are not, please feel free to contact us at one of the addresses below.
Unsolicited letters and articles are warmly welcomed.
The following is a list of possible topic areas that might be found in a representative issue of the journal. The breadth of the list is not designed to give the "flavor" of the journal, but instead to show the large number of possibilities.
Topic Areas:
- Cultural Studies
- Critical theory, marxism, western philosophy
- Ethnic or Race-relations issues, Cultural Politics
- Post-Colonial studies, globalism
- Film studies, film theory
- Arts and Literature: art theory and history, architectural theory and history,
critical interpretation of works or events, film studies, museology, semiology,
aesthetics, preservation and conservation, comparative literature,
performance/dramatic arts, poetry, music
- Women's studies, feminist theory
- Political Issues: critical interrogation of contemporary problems and
events
- Mass media and popular culture: communications, advertising and
consumerism, the role of the media in the creation and perpetuation of
social systems and meaning production, propaganda, media and politics
- Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered issues
- Environmental Issues
- Campus Issues: educational reform, graduate student unionization, free speech, tenure process, pedagogy
- Intellectual, cultural, or urban history
- Micropolitics: public and community service, grass-roots political
movements.
- Book reviews and reviews of other cultural or social events
Notes for Contributors
Contributions should be sent in electronic format by email attachment. Large files (over 5MB) may be forwarded by mailing a CD-ROM containing the files to our mailing address above. If forwarding a disk clearly designate the platform (PC or Mac) and the word processor used. We prefer to receive files in Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. Rich Text Format (.rtf) files are also acceptable. In the case that we are unable to decode your files or attachments, hard copy will be required. Such hard copy should be typed, double spaced on one side of 8-1/2" x 11" or A4 paper, with wide margins. Photographs and other illustrative material should be submitted in GIF or JPEG format, in special cases we will scan supporting materials for contributions offered publication in the journal. Please indicate appropriate position in the text for all images and tables. If you wish your manuscript or disk to be returned, please include return postage.
Authors are required to obtain appropriate permissions for any copyrighted supporting materials that fall outside of free use guidelines. Other Voices will provide you with a standardized permissions form upon request.
All contributions should include BOTH endnotes (where appropriate) and a full bibliography of works cited.
Please avoid the use of "smart quotes" (curled quotes) in word processing documents. They will do not cut-and-paste well into HTML documents and thus are an added difficulty when preparing files for the Web.
The style for citations of written sources should follow current MLA or Chicago conventions.
Please contact the editors with any questions.
Multi-media Elements
In addition to text, Other Voices can publish image, Flash, video, and sound files.
- Inline images should be in GIF or JPEG format and the size you want them to be displayed at. We are able to convert files from other image formats if necessary.
- Video should be in MPEG or RealVideo format. If that is not possible, then QuickTime is acceptable.
- Sound files should be in MP3, RealAudio or .wav format.
NOTE: You must have appropriate permissions to use photographs, paintings, sound, or video created by someone other than yourself if they do not fall within fair-use guidelines. Other Voices will provide you with a standardized permissions form upon request.
Guidelines for Peer Reviewers
The Role of the Reviewer. Reviewers should see themselves as protectors of the quality of the journal Other Voices, as well as of the reputation of the authors who submit papers. It is the reviewer's responsibility to make sure that only high quality papers are published, and that the author(s) are protected from putting poor work into print. From this perspective, the reviewer should not only read the papers thoroughly to find flaws, but should also make recommendations to the author(s) as to how the paper might be improved. - Conflict of Interest. Before reviewing a paper, the reviewer should make sure that there is no conflict of interest in his/her reviewing the paper. Although Other Voices practices blind review it is nevertheless possible that a reviewer may be able to recognize the identity of an author. In such rare cases if a reviewer feels that his/her decision will be affected, he/she should return the paper to the handling editor, stating the conflict of interest. Examples of cases which could cause conflict of interest include:
- papers by an author with whom the reviewer has co-authored a paper recently.
- papers by an author in the same department or in a closely related discipline of the same university as the reviewer.
- papers by an author who was a recent student or thesis advisor of the reviewer.
Also, if a reviewer feels that his/her confidence in the review is not high(e.g. the technical content of the paper is not in his/her main research area), he/she should return the paper to the handling editor and suggest a more suitable person.
The Review. A review
consists of 6 parts: (1) originality of the paper, (2) argumentative
soundness, (3) significance, (4) clarity of presentation, including the
style and English, (5) relevance to the journal Other Voices, and
(6) length (relative to the useful contents of the paper).
Other Voices publishes regular essays, reviews, brief 'comments'
and non-traditional contributions (often hypermedia, visual, or hypertext
projects). A regular paper is either an academic essay or a critical
review essay, discussing an emerging topic area related to Other
Voices. Reviews are not subject to peer-review, but are
reviewed by the editorial collective prior to inclusion. The title,
introduction, and conclusion of all submissions should all be informative
and coherent.
Regular papers are normally limited to 10,000 words and short papers
should have a maximum of 3000 words. We have made and shall continue to
make exceptions to this rule in special cases. Short papers have the same
acceptance standard as longer essays but present claims and
interpretations that can be stated more concisely. If a long submission is
accepted as a short paper, the arguments and conclusions must be
presentable in a concise form.
Rating the Submission. Associated with each
of the above parts
should be a rating from -3 to 3 with 0 being the average as follows.
- 3: Strong Accept (As good as any top paper in reputable
journals)
2: Accept (Comparable to good papers in reputable journals)
1: Weak Accept (I vote acceptance, but won't argue for it)
0: Neutral (I don't like it, but I won't object if others
like it)
-1: Weak Reject (I would rather not see this paper accepted)
-2: Reject (I would argue to reject this paper)
-3: Strong Reject (Definitely detrimental to the journal quality if
accepted)
The Recommendation. In addition to the
numerical ratings above, the reviewer should
make a general recommendation to the handling editor,
stating whether he/she thinks that the paper is acceptable, or what
could
be done to make it acceptable.
The overall recommendation might be:
Reject. The paper is regarded not suitable for
publication in Other Voices. The author(s) may be encouraged to
incorporate
the changes suggested by the reviewers and resubmit the paper as
a new paper.
Resubmit after a major revision. A second round of
review will be
necessary. Author(s) should prepare a revision and resubmit it
for
a second round of review by the same set of reviewers. A letter
explaining the changes made in the revised paper will be
required
from the author(s) if they choose to send in a revised paper.
This
letter will accompany the revised paper and be sent to the same
set of reviewers.
The Paper Requires Minor Changes. Author(s) will be asked
to
revise the paper and resubmit with a letter to the handling
editor,
explaining changes made to address the reviewers' comments.
The revised paper will not go through another round of review.
The handling editor will make the recommendation for publication
to the Editor-in-Chief.
Accept. The paper is accepted as it is, or the paper
should be
accepted but there are some potential improvements that the
author(s) have the option to make.
Timeliness of Reviews.
Once assigned reviews should be completed and returned to the handling editor within
six weeks (three weeks for short papers). In case of delay, the reviewer
should contact the handling editor with a date on which the review can
be returned.
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