We are very glad to give notice of the opening of a Call for Papers for the Special Issue of the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics on (De)Bordering Aesthetics: 19th-Century German Philosophy and the Migratory Turn.

Guest Editor: Gabriele Schimmenti (Roma Tre University, Italy)

Deadline for submission: 31 March 2025

Below you can find the text of the call.

***

Philosophical studies on borders and migration have expanded in recent decades due to (among other things) the international historical challenge represented by the migration processes generated and multiplicated by phenomena such as globalization and climate crisis. In recent years, several scholars in political philosophy and critical political science have advanced the need to rethink categories such as space, territories or borders, as well as the necessity to reconsider political subjectivities from the vantage point of mobility. A migratory turn has also occurred in aesthetics, philosophy of art and art history (Dogramaci 2019). New emergent approaches such as Border Aesthetics (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017; Schimanski 2019) and Migrant Aesthetics (Carpio 2023) emphasize both the crucial role of migration for aesthetic production, and the relevance of aesthetics with regard to the narrative construction/description of borders, borderscapes, migration and the subjectivities involved.

The aim of this special issue is to investigate the relationships between aesthetics, borders and migration in German Philosophy, in particular in 19th-century aesthetics. In fact, 19th-century German aesthetics and, more generally, philosophy represent not only a moment in which an explicit reflection between potentially different concepts of borders is developed — and this can be read as a great attempt of both bordering and debordering — but also a laboratory for rethinking borders from a territorial, (inter)national, economic and cultural perspective, and to consider the phenomenon of global migration in relation to humans and non-humans, including artistic objects.

Manuscripts in MS Word (5,000–10,000 words) adhering to the MLA 9th edition formatting guidelines should be sent to editor@jcla.in by 31 March 2025.

For further information please visit the website of the Journal.