call for content

SEQUITUR Issue 11.1
Fall 2024
https://www.bu.edu/sequitur 
CFP: Beyond the Veil
Deadline: October 7, 2024

The editors of SEQUITUR, the graduate student journal published by the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Boston University, invite current and recent MA, MFA, and PhD students to submit content on the theme of “Beyond the Veil” for our Fall 2024 issue.

This issue invites an exploration of the unseen, the unknown, and the realms that lie out of reach of ordinary or earthly perception. What other worlds exist beyond death, within our minds, under the surface, or in the shadows?

Artists have used every medium at their disposal to imagine what these other worlds might look like, going so far as to employ symbolism, abstraction, and surrealism to grapple with the otherworldly. Ritualistic items, religious artifacts, and funerary objects serve as tangible links to the spiritual and the supernatural. On a larger scale, architectural elements like arches, portals, and windows invite us into holy spaces to seek sanctuary or guide transitions from life to death and back again. In this issue, we aim to gather scholarship that focuses on topics beyond the ordinary that consider the myriad ways in which humanity has envisioned and sought access to the mystical, the transcendent, and the liminal.

Possible subjects may include, but are not limited to:

  • Otherworlds: the in-between, separation, the unearthly, seen and unseen, obfuscated, hidden, neither here nor there, out of time, secret spaces
  • Transience: the beyond, travel, thresholds, liminal spaces, parallels, interstices, passages, portals, doorways, interfaces, windows, brinks
  • Death & resurrection: mourning, memory, farewell, remembrance, burial, necropolis, underworld, afterlife, psychopomp, crossing, sanctuary, heaven, ascension, ceremony, rite, rite of passage, religion, holy, sacrament, celebration, life
  • The supernatural: spiritualism, phantasmagoria, spectral, ethereal, occult, fantasy, superstition, internment, surreal.

SEQUITUR welcomes submissions from graduate students in the disciplines of art history, architecture, archaeology, fine arts, material culture, visual culture, literary studies, queer and gender studies, disability studies, memory studies, and environmental studies, among others. We encourage submissions that take advantage of the digital format of the journal.

Founded in 2014, SEQUITUR is an online biannual scholarly journal dedicated to addressing events, issues, and ideas in art and architectural history. SEQUITUR, edited by graduate students at Boston University, engages with and expands current conversations in the field by promoting the perspectives of graduate students from around the world. It seeks to contribute to existing scholarship by focusing on valuable but often overlooked parts of art and architectural history.

Previous issues of SEQUITUR can be found here

We invite full submissions in the following categories. Please submit your material in full for consideration in the publication:

  • Feature essays (1,500 words)
    • Content should present original material that falls within the stipulated word limit (1,500 words). Please adhere to the formatting guidelines available here.
  • Visual and creative essays (250 words, up to 10 works)
    • We invite M.Arch. or M.F.A. students to showcase a selection of original work in or reproduced in a digital format. We welcome various kinds of creative projects that take advantage of the online format of the journal, such as works that include sound or video.
    • Submissions should consist of a 250-word artist statement and up to 10 works in JPEG, HTML, or MP4 format. All image submissions must be numbered and captioned and should be of good quality and high resolution.

We invite proposals for the following categories. Please write an abstract of no more than 200 words outlining your intended project:

  • Exhibition reviews (500 words)
    • We are especially interested in exhibitions currently on display or very recently closed. We typically prioritize reviews of exhibitions in the Massachusetts and New England area.
  • Book or exhibition catalog reviews (500 words)
    • We are especially interested in reviews of recently published (1-3 years old) books and catalogs.
  • Interviews (750 words)
    • Please include documentation of the interviewee’s affirmation that they will participate in an interview with you.
    • Plan to provide either a full written transcript or a recording of the interview (video or audio).
  • Research spotlights (750 words)
    • Short summaries of ongoing research written in a more casual format than a feature essay or formal paper.
    • For research spotlights, we typically, but not universally, prioritize doctoral candidates who plan to use this platform to share ongoing dissertation research or work of a comparable scale. 

To submit:

  • Email all material to sequitur@bu.edu
  • Include in the email:
    • Your proposal or submission,
    • A recent CV,
    • A brief 50-word bio,
    • Your contact information in the body of the email: name, institution and program, year in program, and email,
    • “SEQUITUR Fall 2024” and the type of submission/proposal as the subject line.

Additional reminders:

  • All submissions and proposals are due October 7, 2024.
  • Please remember to adhere to the formatting guidelines available here.
  • Text must be in the form of a Word document, and images should be sent as .jpeg files.
  • While we welcome as many images as possible, at least ONE must be very high resolution and large format. All other creative media should be sent as weblinks, HTML, or MP4 files if submitting video or other multimedia work.
  • Please note that authors are responsible for obtaining all image copyright releases before publication.

Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission or proposal the week of October 14, 2024 for publication in January 2025.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the SEQUITUR editors at sequitur@bu.edu.