Call For Papers: Critical Interventions Special Issue on Fractals in Global Africa – Spring 2012
Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art and History invites contributions for a special issue on Fractals in Global African Art to be published in Spring 2012.
As an arena for rethinking African arts and exploring the nature and value of African art/cultural knowledge, *Critical Interventions* is interested in how the recent work on fractal structures in African arts and culture can be extended, discussed, contested, and theorized in domains such as aesthetics, politics, philosophy and economics, as well as applied to practical matters such as education and design.
We are therefore interested in receiving proposals for substantial articles on all areas in which global African creativity–painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, film, and other cultural productions–intersects with fractals, networks, complexity, self-organization, and other nonlinear models. Locations could include any African-influenced culture around the globe as well as well as continental Africa.
Possible topics could include any of the following in relation to Africa or the African Diaspora:
- Fractals in art
- Fractals in design and education
- Scaling and recursive patterns in the arts
- Fractal routes/roots
- Visual metaphors of branching (e.g. the Baobab, the arabesque)
- Scaling or self-organization in traditional or contemporary architecture
- Fractal social networks and the arts
- Cycles within cycles in expressive media
We also welcome significant work by artists who work with fractals in classical formats or new media. We invite proposals to be submitted by February 28, 2011. The deadline for the final version of the paper is July 31, 2011. Articles should be based on original research, which has not been published before. Proposals should be no more than 500 words. Articles may be up to 7,500 words (not inclusive of the bibliography) and contain up to ten images. All rights for reproduction of images must be cleared in advance and submitted along with the article.
Proposals of no more than 500 words (or queries) should be sent to Audrey Bennett, Guest Co-Editor (bennett@rpi.edu) Associate Professor of Graphics Department of Language, Literature, and Communication School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th Street Troy, NY 12180-3590
Critical Interventions, a peer-reviewed journal, provides a forum for advanced research and writing on African and African Diaspora identities and cultural practices in the age of globalization.